Paper 102
The Foundations of Religious Faith 종교적 신앙의 토대
1. Assurances of Faith 신앙의 확신
2. Religion and Reality 종교와 실체
3. Knowledge, Wisdom, and Insight 지식, 지혜 및 통찰력
4. The Fact of Experience 체험의 사실
5. The Supremacy of Purposive Potential
6. The Certainty of Religious Faith
7. The Certitude of the Divine
8. The Evidences of Religion
102:0.1 (1118.1) TO THE unbelieving materialist, man is simply an evolutionary accident. His hopes of survival are strung on a figment of mortal imagination; his fears, loves, longings, and beliefs are but the reaction of the incidental juxtaposition of certain lifeless atoms of matter. No display of energy nor expression of trust can carry him beyond the grave. The devotional labors and inspirational genius of the best of men are doomed to be extinguished by death, the long and lonely night of eternal oblivion and soul extinction. Nameless despair is man’s only reward for living and toiling under the temporal sun of mortal existence. Each day of life slowly and surely tightens the grasp of a pitiless doom which a hostile and relentless universe of matter has decreed shall be the crowning insult to everything in human desire which is beautiful, noble, lofty, and good. 불신하는 물질주의자에게 사람은 진화적인 우연의 산물에 불과합니다. 그가 생존할 희망은 필사자가 상상한 허구에 매달려 있습니다; 그의 두려움, 사랑, 갈망, 믿음은 어떤 생명 없는 물질 원자들의 우연한 배열에 대한 반응에 불과합니다. 어떤 에너지 과시도, 어떤 신뢰의 표현도 그를 무덤 너머로 데려갈 수 없습니다. 가장 뛰어난 사람들의 헌신적인 수고와 영감을 띤 천재성도 영원한 망각과 혼의 소멸이라는 길고 외로운 밤, 즉 죽음으로 소멸하게 될 운명입니다. 이름 모를 절망이 필사 존재의 덧없는 태양 아래에서 살며 수고하는 사람이 받는 유일한 보상입니다. 매일의 삶은, 적대적이고 혹독한 물질 우주가 아름답고, 고귀하며, 고상하고 선한 인간의 모든 갈망에 대해 최고 모욕이 되도록 정해놓은 무자비한 운명의 손아귀를, 느리지만 확실하게 조여옵니다.
102:0.2 (1118.2) But such is not man’s end and eternal destiny; such a vision is but the cry of despair uttered by some wandering soul who has become lost in spiritual darkness, and who bravely struggles on in the face of the mechanistic sophistries of a material philosophy, blinded by the confusion and distortion of a complex learning. And all this doom of darkness and all this destiny of despair are forever dispelled by one brave stretch of faith on the part of the most humble and unlearned of God’s children on earth. 그러나 그런 것은 사람의 종말과 영원한 운명이 아닙니다; 그렇게 내다보는 것은 영적 어둠 속에서 길을 잃고, 복잡한 학문의 혼란과 왜곡으로 눈이 멀어, 물질적 철학의 기계론적 궤변에 맞서 용감하게 분투하는 어떤 방황하는 혼이 내지르는 절망의 외침에 불과합니다. 그리고 이런 모든 어둠의 파멸과 이런 모든 절망의 운명은, 지상에서 가장 겸손하고 배우지 못한 하느님 자녀 편에서 행하는 한 번의 용기 있는 신앙의 도약으로 영원히 사라집니다.
102:0.3 (1118.3) This saving faith has its birth in the human heart when the moral consciousness of man realizes that human values may be translated in mortal experience from the material to the spiritual, from the human to the divine, from time to eternity. 이렇게 구원하는 신앙은, 인간의 가치가 필사자의 경험 가운데 물질적인 것에서 영적인 것으로, 인간적인 것에서 신적인 것으로, 시간에서 영원으로 승화될 수 있다고 사람의 도덕적 의식이 깨달을 때, 인간의 심정에서 태어납니다.
1. Assurances of Faith 신앙의 확신
102:1.1 (1118.4) The work of the Thought Adjuster constitutes the explanation of the translation of man’s primitive and evolutionary sense of duty into that higher and more certain faith in the eternal realities of revelation. There must be perfection hunger in man’s heart to insure capacity for comprehending the faith paths to supreme attainment. If any man chooses to do the divine will, he shall know the way of truth. It is literally true, “Human things must be known in order to be loved, but divine things must be loved in order to be known.” But honest doubts and sincere questionings are not sin; such attitudes merely spell delay in the progressive journey toward perfection attainment. Childlike trust secures man’s entrance into the kingdom of heavenly ascent, but progress is wholly dependent on the vigorous exercise of the robust and confident faith of the full-grown man. 생각 조율자의 활동은, 사람의 원시적이며 진화적인 의무감이 계시의 영원한 실체에 대해 더 높고 더 확실한 신앙으로 승화되는 현상을 설명합니다. 최상에 도달하는 신앙의 경로를 이해하는 능력을 확보하려면 사람의 심정에 완전의 갈망이 있어야 합니다. 누구든지 신적 뜻을 행하기로 선택하면, 그는 진리의 길을 알게 될 것입니다. “인간적인 것들은 사랑받기 위해 알려져야 하지만, 신적인 것들은 알려지기 위해서 사랑받아야 합니다.”라는 것은 문자 그대로 참입니다. 그러나 정직한 의심과 진지한 질문은 죄가 아닙니다; 그런 태도는 완전에 도달하려는 점진적 여정에서 지연을 의미할 뿐입니다. 어린애 같은 신뢰는 사람이 하늘 상승의 왕국에 들어가도록 보장하지만, 진보는 성숙한 사람의 강건하고 자신 있는 신앙을 활발히 실천하는데 온전히 달려 있습니다.
102:1.2 (1119.1) The reason of science is based on the observable facts of time; the faith of religion argues from the spirit program of eternity. What knowledge and reason cannot do for us, true wisdom admonishes us to allow faith to accomplish through religious insight and spiritual transformation. 과학의 이성은 시간의 관찰할 수 있는 사실에 근거합니다; 종교의 신앙은 영원의 영적 계획을 근거로 논리를 전개합니다. 지식과 이성이 우리를 위해 할 수 없는 것은, 참된 지혜는, 종교적 통찰력과 영적 변화를 통해 신앙이 성취하게 하라고 우리에게 권면합니다.
102:1.3 (1119.2) Owing to the isolation of rebellion, the revelation of truth on Urantia has all too often been mixed up with the statements of partial and transient cosmologies. Truth remains unchanged from generation to generation, but the associated teachings about the physical world vary from day to day and from year to year. Eternal truth should not be slighted because it chances to be found in company with obsolete ideas regarding the material world. The more of science you know, the less sure you can be; the more of religion you have, the more certain you are. 반역의 고립으로 인해, 유란시아에서 진리의 계시는 너무 자주 부분적이며 일시적인 우주론의 진술들과 뒤섞였습니다. 진리는 대대로 변하지 않지만, 물리 세계와 관련된 가르침은 매일, 해마다 바뀝니다. 영원한 진리는 어쩌다 낡은 물질세계의 관념들과 함께 발견되었다는 이유로 경시되지 말아야 합니다. 너희가 과학을 많이 알수록 확신은 줄어들 것입니다; 너희가 종교를 깊이 지닐수록 더욱 확신할 것입니다.
102:1.4 (1119.3) The certainties of science proceed entirely from the intellect; the certitudes of religion spring from the very foundations of the entire personality. Science appeals to the understanding of the mind; religion appeals to the loyalty and devotion of the body, mind, and spirit, even to the whole personality. 과학의 확신은 완전히 지성에서 비롯됩니다; 종교의 확신은 전 인격(고유성)의 그 근본에서 솟아납니다. 과학은 마음의 이해에 호소합니다; 종교는 몸, 마음 그리고 영의 충성과 헌신은 물론, 전체 인격(고유성)에까지 호소합니다.
102:1.5 (1119.4) God is so all real and absolute that no material sign of proof or no demonstration of so-called miracle may be offered in testimony of his reality. Always will we know him because we trust him, and our belief in him is wholly based on our personal participation in the divine manifestations of his infinite reality. 하느님은 너무나 참되고 절대적이어서, 그의 실체를 증명하는 어떤 물질적 증거의 표시나 소위 기적의 시연도 제시될 수 없습니다. 우리는 언제나 그를 신뢰하기에 그를 알게 되며, 그에 대한 우리의 믿음은 그의 무한한 실체가 신적으로 드러나는 일에 우리가 개인적으로 참여하는 데에 전적으로 근거합니다.
102:1.6 (1119.5) The indwelling Thought Adjuster unfailingly arouses in man’s soul a true and searching hunger for perfection together with a far-reaching curiosity which can be adequately satisfied only by communion with God, the divine source of that Adjuster. The hungry soul of man refuses to be satisfied with anything less than the personal realization of the living God. Whatever more God may be than a high and perfect moral personality, he cannot, in our hungry and finite concept, be anything less. 내주하는 생각 조율자는, 그 조율자의 신적 근원인 하느님과 교감을 통해서만 적절히 충족될 수 있는 광범위한 호기심과 더불어, 사람의 혼 안에 완전에 대해 참된 탐구적 갈망을 분명히 불러일으킵니다. 사람의 굶주린 혼은 살아계신 하느님을 개인적으로 실감하는 것에 미치지 못하는 어떤 것에도 만족하기를 거부합니다. 하느님이 높고 완전한 도덕적 인격(고유성) 그 이상의 무엇이시든, 굶주리고 유한한 우리의 개념 속에서 그는 그 이하가 될 수 없습니다.
2. Religion and Reality 종교와 실체
102:2.1 (1119.6) Observing minds and discriminating souls know religion when they find it in the lives of their fellows. Religion requires no definition; we all know its social, intellectual, moral, and spiritual fruits. And this all grows out of the fact that religion is the property of the human race; it is not a child of culture. True, one’s perception of religion is still human and therefore subject to the bondage of ignorance, the slavery of superstition, the deceptions of sophistication, and the delusions of false philosophy. 관찰하는 마음과 분별력 있는 혼들은 동료들의 삶에서 종교를 발견할 때 그것을 알아봅니다. 종교는 정의가 필요 없습니다; 우리는 모두 종교가 맺는 사회적, 지적, 도덕적 그리고 영적 열매를 알고 있습니다. 이런 모두는 종교가 인류의 소유물이지 문화의 산물이 아니라는 사실에서 비롯됩니다. 참으로, 종교에 대한 개인의 인식은 여전히 인간적이어서, 무지의 속박, 미신의 노예 상태, 궤변의 기만 그리고 거짓 철학의 망상에 종속되기 쉽습니다.
102:2.2 (1119.7) One of the characteristic peculiarities of genuine religious assurance is that, notwithstanding the absoluteness of its affirmations and the stanchness of its attitude, the spirit of its expression is so poised and tempered that it never conveys the slightest impression of self-assertion or egoistic exaltation. The wisdom of religious experience is something of a paradox in that it is both humanly original and Adjuster derivative. Religious force is not the product of the individual’s personal prerogatives but rather the outworking of that sublime partnership of man and the everlasting source of all wisdom. Thus do the words and acts of true and undefiled religion become compellingly authoritative for all enlightened mortals. 참된 종교적 확신의 특징적인 특색 중 하나는, 그 증언의 절대성과 태도의 확고함에도 불구하고, 그것을 표현하는 영이 너무나 균형 잡히고 절제되어 있어서 자기주장이나 이기적 자만의 인상을 조금도 전달하지 않는다는 것입니다. 종교적 체험의 지혜는 인간적으로 독창적이면서 조율자에게서 유래한다는 점에서 일종의 역설입니다. 종교적 기세는 개인의 사적 특권의 산물이 아니라, 인간과 모든 지혜의 영원한 근원의 숭고한 동반자 관계가 드러난 결과입니다. 그래서 참되고 더럽혀지지 않은 종교의 말과 행동은 깨우친 모든 필사자에게 강력히 권위 있게 됩니다.
102:2.3 (1119.8) It is difficult to identify and analyze the factors of a religious experience, but it is not difficult to observe that such religious practitioners live and carry on as if already in the presence of the Eternal. Believers react to this temporal life as if immortality already were within their grasp. In the lives of such mortals there is a valid originality and a spontaneity of expression that forever segregate them from those of their fellows who have imbibed only the wisdom of the world. Religionists seem to live in effective emancipation from harrying haste and the painful stress of the vicissitudes inherent in the temporal currents of time; they exhibit a stabilization of personality and a tranquillity of character not explained by the laws of physiology, psychology, and sociology. 종교 체험의 요인들을 규명하고 분석하기는 어렵지만, 그런 종교 실천가들이 마치 이미 영원자의 임재 속에 있듯이 살아가고 행동하는 것을 관찰하기에 어렵지 않습니다. 신자들은 이런 일시적인 삶에 대해서 마치 불멸이 이미 그들의 손안에 있는 것처럼 반응합니다. 그런 필사자들의 삶에는 타당한 독창성과 표현의 자발성이 있어서, 세상의 지혜만 받아들인 그 동료들의 그런 것들에서 영원히 분리합니다. 종교인들은 괴롭히는 성급함과 시간의 일시적 흐름에 본래 있는 흥망성쇠의 고통스러운 스트레스에서 효과적으로 해방되어 사는 듯이 보입니다; 그들은 생리학, 심리학 그리고 사회학의 법칙으로 설명되지 않는 인격(고유성)의 안정과 성품의 평온함을 보입니다.
102:2.4 (1120.1) Time is an invariable element in the attainment of knowledge; religion makes its endowments immediately available, albeit there is the important factor of growth in grace, definite advancement in all phases of religious experience. Knowledge is an eternal quest; always are you learning, but never are you able to arrive at the full knowledge of absolute truth. In knowledge alone there can never be absolute certainty, only increasing probability of approximation; but the religious soul of spiritual illumination knows, and knows now. And yet this profound and positive certitude does not lead such a sound-minded religionist to take any less interest in the ups and downs of the progress of human wisdom, which is bound up on its material end with the developments of slow-moving science. 시간은 지식을 얻는 데 불변의 요소입니다; 종교는 은혜 가운데 성장, 즉 종교 체험의 모든 단계에서 명확한 진보의 중요한 요소가 있지만, 그 재질들을 즉시 쓸모 있게 합니다. 지식은 영원한 탐구입니다; 너희는 언제나 배우고 있지만, 결코 절대 진리의 완전한 지식에 이를 수 없습니다. 지식만으로 절대적 확실성이 결코 있을 수 없고, 근사치의 증가하는 개연성이 있을 뿐입니다: 그러나 영적으로 조명된 종교적 혼은 알고 있으며 지금 압니다. 그러나 이렇게 깊고 긍정적인 확신이 그토록 건전한 마음의 종교인에게 인간적 지혜가 발전하는 흥망성쇠에 대해 조금이라도 관심을 덜 가지도록 하지 않는데, 인간 지혜의 발전은 그 물질적 측면에서 더디 움직이는 과학의 발전과 밀접하게 연결되어 있기 때문입니다.
102:2.5 (1120.2) Even the discoveries of science are not truly real in the consciousness of human experience until they are unraveled and correlated, until their relevant facts actually become meaning through encircuitment in the thought streams of mind. Mortal man views even his physical environment from the mind level, from the perspective of its psychological registry. It is not, therefore, strange that man should place a highly unified interpretation upon the universe and then seek to identify this energy unity of his science with the spirit unity of his religious experience. Mind is unity; mortal consciousness lives on the mind level and perceives the universal realities through the eyes of the mind endowment. The mind perspective will not yield the existential unity of the source of reality, the First Source and Center, but it can and sometime will portray to man the experiential synthesis of energy, mind, and spirit in and as the Supreme Being. But mind can never succeed in this unification of the diversity of reality unless such mind is firmly aware of material things, intellectual meanings, and spiritual values; only in the harmony of the triunity of functional reality is there unity, and only in unity is there the personality satisfaction of the realization of cosmic constancy and consistency. 과학의 발견조차 인간 체험의 의식 속에서 그것들이 해명되고 서로 관련될 때까지, 그렇게 관련된 사실들이 마음의 사고 흐름에서 회로로 연결되어 의미로 자리 잡을 때까지는 진정한 실재가 아닙니다. 필사 사람은 자신의 물리적 환경조차 마음 차원, 즉 심리적 인식의 관점에서 바라봅니다. 그러므로 사람이 우주에 대해 고도로 통일된 해석을 내리고 자기 과학의 에너지 통일성을 자기 종교 체험의 영 통일성과 동일시하려고 애쓰는 것은 이상한 일이 아닙니다. 마음은 통일성입니다; 필사 의식은 마음 차원에서 살며 마음 재질의 눈을 통해 우주 일체를 감지합니다. 마음의 관점은 실체의 근원, 첫째 근원 중심의 존재적 통일성을 밝히지 못하나, 최극 존재 안에서 그리고 최극 존재로서 에너지, 마음 그리고 영의 체험적 통합을 사람에게 묘사할 수 있으며 언젠가 그렇게 할 것입니다. 그러나 그런 마음이 물질적 사물들, 지적 의미들 그리고 영적 가치들을 확고히 깨닫지 않으면 다양한 실체의 이런 통합에 결코 성공할 수 없습니다. 기능적 실체의 삼원일체 조화 안에만 통일성이 있으며, 오직 통일성 속에만 우주적 불변성과 일관성을 실감하는 인격(고유성)적 만족이 있습니다.
102:2.6 (1120.3) Unity is best found in human experience through philosophy. And while the body of philosophic thought must ever be founded on material facts, the soul and energy of true philosophic dynamics is mortal spiritual insight. 통일성은 철학을 통해 인간 체험에서 가장 잘 발견됩니다. 그리고 철학적 사상의 본체는 언제나 물질적 사실에 기초해야 하지만, 참된 철학적 원동력의 혼과 에너지는 필사자의 영적 통찰력입니다.
102:2.7 (1120.4) Evolutionary man does not naturally relish hard work. To keep pace in his life experience with the impelling demands and the compelling urges of a growing religious experience means incessant activity in spiritual growth, intellectual expansion, factual enlargement, and social service. There is no real religion apart from a highly active personality. Therefore do the more indolent of men often seek to escape the rigors of truly religious activities by a species of ingenious self-deception through resorting to a retreat to the false shelter of stereotyped religious doctrines and dogmas. But true religion is alive. Intellectual crystallization of religious concepts is the equivalent of spiritual death. You cannot conceive of religion without ideas, but when religion once becomes reduced only to an idea, it is no longer religion; it has become merely a species of human philosophy. 진화 인간은 본래 힘든 일을 즐기지 않습니다. 자기 삶의 경험에서 성장하는 종교 체험의 재촉하는 요구와 강력한 충동에 보조를 맞추려면 영적 성장, 지적 확장, 사실적 확대 및 사회적 봉사에서 끊임없는 활동이 필요합니다. 진정한 종교는 고도로 활동적인 인격(고유성)을 떠나서는 존재하지 않습니다. 따라서 더 나태한 사람들은 자주 상투적인 종교적 교의와 교리의 거짓 피난처로 도피하는 수단을 통한 일종의 교묘한 자기기만으로 참된 종교 활동의 어려움을 피하려 합니다. 그러나 참된 종교는 살아 있습니다. 종교 개념의 지적 고착화는 영적 죽음과 같습니다. 너희는 발상 없이 종교를 생각할 수 없지만, 종교가 일단 발상으로 단지 축소되면, 그것은 더 이상 종교가 아닙니다; 그것은 단지 일종의 인간 철학이 되어버립니다.
102:2.8 (1121.1) Again, there are other types of unstable and poorly disciplined souls who would use the sentimental ideas of religion as an avenue of escape from the irritating demands of living. When certain vacillating and timid mortals attempt to escape from the incessant pressure of evolutionary life, religion, as they conceive it, seems to present the nearest refuge, the best avenue of escape. But it is the mission of religion to prepare man for bravely, even heroically, facing the vicissitudes of life. Religion is evolutionary man’s supreme endowment, the one thing which enables him to carry on and “endure as seeing Him who is invisible.” Mysticism, however, is often something of a retreat from life which is embraced by those humans who do not relish the more robust activities of living a religious life in the open arenas of human society and commerce. True religion must act. Conduct will be the result of religion when man actually has it, or rather when religion is permitted truly to possess the man. Never will religion be content with mere thinking or unacting feeling. 또한 다른 유형의 불안정하고 훈련이 부족한 혼들은 종교의 감상적인 발상들을 삶의 귀찮은 요구에서 도피하는 수단으로 이용하려 합니다. 머뭇거리면서 소심한 어떤 필사자들은 진화적 삶의 끊임없는 압박에서 벗어나려 할 때, 그들이 생각하는 대로 종교는 가장 가까운 피난처, 최상의 도피 수단을 제공하는 것처럼 보입니다. 그러나 종교의 사명은 사람이 삶의 우여곡절을 용감하게, 심지어 영웅적으로 맞서도록 준비시키는 것입니다. 종교는 진화 인간의 최고 자질이며, 그가 계속 나아가며 “보이지 않는 그를 보는 것처럼 견디게(히11.27)” 하는 유일한 것입니다. 그러나 신비주의는 종종 인간 사회와 상업의 열린 무대에서 종교적 삶을 사는 더 강건한 활동을 즐기지 않는 그런 인간들이 받아들이는 생활의 도피와 같은 것입니다. 참된 종교는 행동해야 합니다. 행위는, 사람이 실제로 종교를 가질 때, 혹은 종교가 그 사람을 진실로 소유하도록 허용될 때, 나타나는 종교의 결과일 것입니다. 종교는 결코 생각만 하거나 행동하지 않는 느낌만으로 만족하지 않을 것입니다.
102:2.9 (1121.2) We are not blind to the fact that religion often acts unwisely, even irreligiously, but it acts. Aberrations of religious conviction have led to bloody persecutions, but always and ever religion does something; it is dynamic! 우리는 종교가 종종 어리석게, 심지어 비종교적으로 행동한다는 사실을 모르지 않지만, 종교는 행동합니다. 종교적 신념의 탈선이 피비린내 나는 박해를 초래하기도 했지만, 종교는 언제나 무언가를 항상 합니다; 그것은 역동적입니다!
3. Knowledge, Wisdom, and Insight 지식, 지혜 및 통찰력
102:3.1 (1121.3) Intellectual deficiency or educational poverty unavoidably handicaps higher religious attainment because such an impoverished environment of the spiritual nature robs religion of its chief channel of philosophic contact with the world of scientific knowledge. The intellectual factors of religion are important, but their overdevelopment is likewise sometimes very handicapping and embarrassing. Religion must continually labor under a paradoxical necessity: the necessity of making effective use of thought while at the same time discounting the spiritual serviceableness of all thinking. 지적 결핍이나 교육적 빈곤은 더 높은 종교적 성취를 불가피하게 방해하는 데 왜냐하면 영적 본성의 그런 허약한 환경은 종교가 과학적 지식의 세계와 철학적으로 접촉할 수 있는 주된 통로를 빼앗아 버리기 때문입니다. 종교의 지적 요소는 중요하지만, 그것들이 지나치게 발달하면 마찬가지로 때때로 아주 방해가 되어 곤란을 가져옵니다. 종교는 끊임없이 역설적인 필요성 속에서 애써야 합니다; 사고를 효과적으로 활용해야 하지만 동시에 모든 사고의 영적 유용성을 낮추어야 하는 필요성입니다.
102:3.2 (1121.4) Religious speculation is inevitable but always detrimental; speculation invariably falsifies its object. Speculation tends to translate religion into something material or humanistic, and thus, while directly interfering with the clarity of logical thought, it indirectly causes religion to appear as a function of the temporal world, the very world with which it should everlastingly stand in contrast. Therefore will religion always be characterized by paradoxes, the paradoxes resulting from the absence of the experiential connection between the material and the spiritual levels of the universe — morontia mota, the superphilosophic sensitivity for truth discernment and unity perception. 종교적 사색은 불가피하지만 언제나 해롭습니다; 사색은 변함 없이 그 대상을 왜곡합니다. 사색은 종교를 물질적이거나 인간 중심적인 것으로 바꾸려는 경향이 있어서, 논리적인 사고의 명료성을 직접 방해하는 동시에 종교가 영원히 그와 다르게 있어야 할 바로 그 일시적 세계의 기능으로 보이게 하는 간접적 원인이 됩니다. 그래서 종교는 언제나 역설로 특징지어지는데, 이 역설은 우주의 물질적 차원과 영적 차원 사이의 체험적 연결 – 모론시아 모타, 즉 진리를 식별하고 통일성을 인식하는 초(超) 철학적 감수성이 없어서 생깁니다.
102:3.3 (1121.5) Material feelings, human emotions, lead directly to material actions, selfish acts. Religious insights, spiritual motivations, lead directly to religious actions, unselfish acts of social service and altruistic benevolence. 물질적 느낌, 인간의 감정은 직접 물질적 행동, 즉 이기적 행위로 이어집니다. 종교적 통찰력, 영적 동기는 직접 종교적 행동, 사회적 봉사와 이타적 박애의 사심 없는 행위로 이어집니다.
102:3.4 (1121.6) Religious desire is the hunger quest for divine reality. Religious experience is the realization of the consciousness of having found God. And when a human being does find God, there is experienced within the soul of that being such an indescribable restlessness of triumph in discovery that he is impelled to seek loving service-contact with his less illuminated fellows, not to disclose that he has found God, but rather to allow the overflow of the welling-up of eternal goodness within his own soul to refresh and ennoble his fellows. Real religion leads to increased social service. 종교적 욕망은 신적 실체를 갈망하는 여정입니다. 종교 체험은 하느님을 찾았다는 의식을 실감하는 것입니다. 인간이 하느님을 발견하면, 그 존재의 혼 내부에는 발견한 환희로 형언하기 벅찬 활동적인 체험을 하여서 그는 영적 빛이 더 필요한 동료들에게 사랑의 봉사로 접촉하려는 충동을 느끼는데, 자신이 하느님을 발견했다고 드러내는 것이 아니라 오히려 자기 혼 안에서 샘솟는 영원한 선함이 흘러넘쳐서 자기 동료들을 새롭게 하고 고귀하게 하려는 것입니다. 참된 종교는 증진된 사회봉사로 이어집니다.
102:3.5 (1122.1) Science, knowledge, leads to fact consciousness; religion, experience, leads to value consciousness; philosophy, wisdom, leads to co-ordinate consciousness; revelation (the substitute for morontia mota) leads to the consciousness of true reality; while the co-ordination of the consciousness of fact, value, and true reality constitutes awareness of personality reality, maximum of being, together with the belief in the possibility of the survival of that very personality. 과학, 즉 지식은 사실 의식으로 이어집니다; 종교, 즉 체험은 가치 의식으로 이어집니다; 철학, 즉 지혜는 조정된 의식으로 이어집니다; (모론시아 모타의 대용품인) 계시는 참된 실체의 의식으로 이어집니다; 반면에 사실, 가치 그리고 참된 실체에 대한 통합된 의식은 바로 그 인격(고유성)의 생존 가능성을 믿는 것과 더불어 인격(고유성) 실체, 존재의 최고치를 깊이 깨닫게 합니다.
102:3.6 (1122.2) Knowledge leads to placing men, to originating social strata and castes. Religion leads to serving men, thus creating ethics and altruism. Wisdom leads to the higher and better fellowship of both ideas and one’s fellows. Revelation liberates men and starts them out on the eternal adventure. 지식은 사람들을 분류하여, 사회 계층과 지위를 만들도록 이끕니다. 종교는 사람들을 섬겨서 윤리와 애타주의를 창조하도록 이끕니다. 지혜는 발상들과 사람의 동료들 모두 더 높고 나은 친교로 이끕니다. 계시는 사람들을 해방하여 그들을 영원한 모험에 나서게 합니다.
102:3.7 (1122.3) Science sorts men; religion loves men, even as yourself; wisdom does justice to differing men; but revelation glorifies man and discloses his capacity for partnership with God. 과학은 사람들을 분류합니다; 종교는 너희 자신처럼 사람들을 사랑합니다; 지혜는 서로 다른 사람들에게 정의를 행합니다; 그러나 계시는 사람을 영화롭게 하며 하느님의 동반자로서 그의 능력을 드러냅니다.
102:3.8 (1122.4) Science vainly strives to create the brotherhood of culture; religion brings into being the brotherhood of the spirit. Philosophy strives for the brotherhood of wisdom; revelation portrays the eternal brotherhood, the Paradise Corps of the Finality. 과학은 문화의 형제공동체를 창조하려고 헛되이 애씁니다; 종교는 영의 형제공동체를 창조합니다. 철학은 지혜의 형제공동체를 얻으려고 노력합니다; 계시는 영원한 형제공동체, 천국 최종단(最終團)을 묘사하고 있습니다.
102:3.9 (1122.5) Knowledge yields pride in the fact of personality; wisdom is the consciousness of the meaning of personality; religion is the experience of cognizance of the value of personality; revelation is the assurance of personality survival. 지식은 인격(고유성)의 사실에 대한 자부심을 낳습니다; 지혜는 인격(고유성)의 의미에 대한 의식입니다; 종교는 인격(고유성)의 가치에 대한 인식의 체험입니다; 계시는 인격(고유성) 생존의 확신입니다.
102:3.10 (1122.6) Science seeks to identify, analyze, and classify the segmented parts of the limitless cosmos. Religion grasps the idea-of-the-whole, the entire cosmos. Philosophy attempts the identification of the material segments of science with the spiritual-insight concept of the whole. Wherein philosophy fails in this attempt, revelation succeeds, affirming that the cosmic circle is universal, eternal, absolute, and infinite. This cosmos of the Infinite I AM is therefore endless, limitless, and all-inclusive — timeless, spaceless, and unqualified. And we bear testimony that the Infinite I AM is also the Father of Michael of Nebadon and the God of human salvation. 과학은 한계 없는 우주의 분절된 부분을 식별하고, 분석하며, 분류하려 합니다. 종교는 전체성의 개념, 전체 우주를 파악합니다. 철학은 과학의 물질적 부분들을 전체에 대한 영적 통찰 개념과 동일시하려 합니다. 철학이 이런 시도로 실패하는 점에서 계시는 성공하여, 우주 전역은 우주적이고, 영원하며, 절대적이고, 무한하다고 확언합니다. 자존(스스로 계신) 무한자의 이런 우주는 그래서 끝이 없고, 한계가 없으며, 모두를 포함하여 – 시간도 없고, 공간도 없으며, 제한도 없습니다. 우리는 자존(스스로 계신) 무한자가 또한 네바돈 미가엘의 아버지이며 인간 구원의 하느님이라고 증언합니다(출3.14).
102:3.11 (1122.7) Science indicates Deity as a fact; philosophy presents the idea of an Absolute; religion envisions God as a loving spiritual personality. Revelation affirms the unity of the fact of Deity, the idea of the Absolute, and the spiritual personality of God and, further, presents this concept as our Father — the universal fact of existence, the eternal idea of mind, and the infinite spirit of life. 과학은 신(神)을 하나의 사실로서 보여줍니다; 철학은 절대자의 관념을 제시합니다; 종교는 하느님을 사랑하는 영적 인격(고유성)으로 그려냅니다. 계시는 신(神)의 사실, 절대자의 관념, 하느님의 영적 인격(고유성)의 통일성을 확언하며, 게다가 존재의 우주적 사실, 마음의 영원한 개념 및 생명의 무한한 영이라는 이런 개념을 우리 아버지로 제시합니다.
102:3.12 (1122.8) The pursuit of knowledge constitutes science; the search for wisdom is philosophy; the love for God is religion; the hunger for truth is a revelation. But it is the indwelling Thought Adjuster that attaches the feeling of reality to man’s spiritual insight into the cosmos. 지식의 추구는 과학입니다; 지혜의 탐구는 철학입니다; 하느님을 사랑하는 것이 종교입니다; 진리에 대한 갈망이 계시입니다. 그러나 내주하는 생각 조율자는 인간의 우주에 대한 영적 통찰력에 실체감을 부여합니다.
102:3.13 (1122.9) In science, the idea precedes the expression of its realization; in religion, the experience of realization precedes the expression of the idea. There is a vast difference between the evolutionary will-to-believe and the product of enlightened reason, religious insight, and revelation — the will that believes. 과학에서는, 발상이 그 실감의 표현보다 먼저 일어납니다; 종교에서는, 실감의 체험이 발상의 표현보다 먼저 일어납니다. 진화적인 ‘믿으려는 의지’와 ‘믿는 의지’ – 깨우친 이성, 종교적 통찰 및 계시의 산물 사이에는 엄청난 차이가 있습니다.
102:3.14 (1122.10) In evolution, religion often leads to man’s creating his concepts of God; revelation exhibits the phenomenon of God’s evolving man himself, while in the earth life of Christ Michael we behold the phenomenon of God’s revealing himself to man. Evolution tends to make God manlike; revelation tends to make man Godlike. 진화 과정에서, 종교는 종종 인간이 자기의 하느님 개념을 만들도록 이끕니다; 계시는 하느님이 사람 자체를 진화시키는 현상을 보여주며, 한편 그리스도 미가엘의 지상 생활에서, 하느님이 인간에게 자신을 계시하는 현상을 우리가 봅니다. 진화는 하느님을 인간처럼 만드는 경향이 있습니다; 계시는 사람을 하느님처럼 만드는 경향이 있습니다.
102:3.15 (1122.11) Science is only satisfied with first causes, religion with supreme personality, and philosophy with unity. Revelation affirms that these three are one, and that all are good. The eternal real is the good of the universe and not the time illusions of space evil. In the spiritual experience of all personalities, always is it true that the real is the good and the good is the real. 과학은 첫째 원인에만 만족하며, 종교는 최고 인격(고유성)에 만족하며, 철학은 통일에 만족합니다. 계시는 이런 셋이 하나이며, 모두 선하다고 단언합니다. 영원한 실재는 우주의 선이며, 시간의 환상인 공간의 악이 아닙니다. 모든 인격(고유성)의 영적 체험에서, 실재는 선이며, 선은 실재임이 언제나 참입니다.
4. The Fact of Experience 체험의 사실
102:4.1 (1123.1) Because of the presence in your minds of the Thought Adjuster, it is no more of a mystery for you to know the mind of God than for you to be sure of the consciousness of knowing any other mind, human or superhuman. Religion and social consciousness have this in common: They are predicated on the consciousness of other-mindness. The technique whereby you can accept another’s idea as yours is the same whereby you may “let the mind which was in Christ be also in you.”
102:4.2 (1123.2) What is human experience? It is simply any interplay between an active and questioning self and any other active and external reality. The mass of experience is determined by depth of concept plus totality of recognition of the reality of the external. The motion of experience equals the force of expectant imagination plus the keenness of the sensory discovery of the external qualities of contacted reality. The fact of experience is found in self-consciousness plus other-existences — other-thingness, other-mindness, and other-spiritness.
102:4.3 (1123.3) Man very early becomes conscious that he is not alone in the world or the universe. There develops a natural spontaneous self-consciousness of other-mindness in the environment of selfhood. Faith translates this natural experience into religion, the recognition of God as the reality — source, nature, and destiny — of other-mindness. But such a knowledge of God is ever and always a reality of personal experience. If God were not a personality, he could not become a living part of the real religious experience of a human personality.
102:4.4 (1123.4) The element of error present in human religious experience is directly proportional to the content of materialism which contaminates the spiritual concept of the Universal Father. Man’s prespirit progression in the universe consists in the experience of divesting himself of these erroneous ideas of the nature of God and of the reality of pure and true spirit. Deity is more than spirit, but the spiritual approach is the only one possible to ascending man.
102:4.5 (1123.5) Prayer is indeed a part of religious experience, but it has been wrongly emphasized by modern religions, much to the neglect of the more essential communion of worship. The reflective powers of the mind are deepened and broadened by worship. Prayer may enrich the life, but worship illuminates destiny.
102:4.6 (1123.6) Revealed religion is the unifying element of human existence. Revelation unifies history, co-ordinates geology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, and psychology. Spiritual experience is the real soul of man’s cosmos.
5. The Supremacy of Purposive Potential
102:5.1 (1123.7) Although the establishment of the fact of belief is not equivalent to establishing the fact of that which is believed, nevertheless, the evolutionary progression of simple life to the status of personality does demonstrate the fact of the existence of the potential of personality to start with. And in the time universes, potential is always supreme over the actual. In the evolving cosmos the potential is what is to be, and what is to be is the unfolding of the purposive mandates of Deity.
102:5.2 (1124.1) This same purposive supremacy is shown in the evolution of mind ideation when primitive animal fear is transmuted into the constantly deepening reverence for God and into increasing awe of the universe. Primitive man had more religious fear than faith, and the supremacy of spirit potentials over mind actuals is demonstrated when this craven fear is translated into living faith in spiritual realities.
102:5.3 (1124.2) You can psychologize evolutionary religion but not the personal-experience religion of spiritual origin. Human morality may recognize values, but only religion can conserve, exalt, and spiritualize such values. But notwithstanding such actions, religion is something more than emotionalized morality. Religion is to morality as love is to duty, as sonship is to servitude, as essence is to substance. Morality discloses an almighty Controller, a Deity to be served; religion discloses an all-loving Father, a God to be worshiped and loved. And again this is because the spiritual potentiality of religion is dominant over the duty actuality of the morality of evolution.
6. The Certainty of Religious Faith
102:6.1 (1124.3) The philosophic elimination of religious fear and the steady progress of science add greatly to the mortality of false gods; and even though these casualties of man-made deities may momentarily befog the spiritual vision, they eventually destroy that ignorance and superstition which so long obscured the living God of eternal love. The relation between the creature and the Creator is a living experience, a dynamic religious faith, which is not subject to precise definition. To isolate part of life and call it religion is to disintegrate life and to distort religion. And this is just why the God of worship claims all allegiance or none.
102:6.2 (1124.4) The gods of primitive men may have been no more than shadows of themselves; the living God is the divine light whose interruptions constitute the creation shadows of all space.
102:6.3 (1124.5) The religionist of philosophic attainment has faith in a personal God of personal salvation, something more than a reality, a value, a level of achievement, an exalted process, a transmutation, the ultimate of time-space, an idealization, the personalization of energy, the entity of gravity, a human projection, the idealization of self, nature’s upthrust, the inclination to goodness, the forward impulse of evolution, or a sublime hypothesis. The religionist has faith in a God of love. Love is the essence of religion and the wellspring of superior civilization.
102:6.4 (1124.6) Faith transforms the philosophic God of probability into the saving God of certainty in the personal religious experience. Skepticism may challenge the theories of theology, but confidence in the dependability of personal experience affirms the truth of that belief which has grown into faith.
102:6.5 (1124.7) Convictions 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?”
102:6.6 (1125.1) Though reason can always question faith, faith can always supplement both reason and logic. Reason creates the probability which faith can transform into a moral certainty, even a spiritual experience. God is the first truth and the last fact; therefore does all truth take origin in him, while all facts exist relative to him. God is absolute truth. As truth one may know God, but to understand — to explain — God, one must explore the fact of the universe of universes. The vast gulf between the experience of the truth of God and ignorance as to the fact of God can be bridged only by living faith. Reason alone cannot achieve harmony between infinite truth and universal fact.
102:6.7 (1125.2) Belief may not be able to resist doubt and withstand fear, but faith is always triumphant over doubting, for faith is both positive and living. The positive always has the advantage over the negative, truth over error, experience over theory, spiritual realities over the isolated facts of time and space. The convincing evidence of this spiritual certainty consists in the social fruits of the spirit which such believers, faithers, yield as a result of this genuine spiritual experience. Said Jesus: “If you love your fellows as I have loved you, then shall all men know that you are my disciples.”
102:6.8 (1125.3) To science God is a possibility, to psychology a desirability, to philosophy a probability, to religion a certainty, an actuality of religious experience. Reason demands that a philosophy which cannot find the God of probability should be very respectful of that religious faith which can and does find the God of certitude. Neither should science discount religious experience on grounds of credulity, not so long as it persists in the assumption that man’s intellectual and philosophic endowments emerged from increasingly lesser intelligences the further back they go, finally taking origin in primitive life which was utterly devoid of all thinking and feeling.
102:6.9 (1125.4) The facts of evolution must not be arrayed against the truth of the reality of the certainty of the spiritual experience of the religious living of the God-knowing mortal. Intelligent men should cease to reason like children and should attempt to use the consistent logic of adulthood, logic which tolerates the concept of truth alongside the observation of fact. Scientific materialism has gone bankrupt when it persists, in the face of each recurring universe phenomenon, in refunding its current objections by referring what is admittedly higher back into that which is admittedly lower. Consistency demands the recognition of the activities of a purposive Creator.
102:6.10 (1125.5) Organic 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.
7. The Certitude of the Divine
102:7.1 (1126.1) The Universal Father, being self-existent, is also self-explanatory; he actually lives in every rational mortal. But you cannot be sure about God unless you know him; sonship is the only experience which makes fatherhood certain. The universe is everywhere undergoing change. A changing universe is a dependent universe; such a creation cannot be either final or absolute. A finite universe is wholly dependent on the Ultimate and the Absolute. The universe and God are not identical; one is cause, the other effect. The cause is absolute, infinite, eternal, and changeless; the effect, time-space and transcendental but ever changing, always growing.
102:7.2 (1126.2) God is the one and only self-caused fact in the universe. He is the secret of the order, plan, and purpose of the whole creation of things and beings. The everywhere-changing universe is regulated and stabilized by absolutely unchanging laws, the habits of an unchanging God. The fact of God, the divine law, is changeless; the truth of God, his relation to the universe, is a relative revelation which is ever adaptable to the constantly evolving universe.
102:7.3 (1126.3) Those who would invent a religion without God are like those who would gather fruit without trees, have children without parents. You cannot have effects without causes; only the I AM is causeless. The fact of religious experience implies God, and such a God of personal experience must be a personal Deity. You cannot pray to a chemical formula, supplicate a mathematical equation, worship a hypothesis, confide in a postulate, commune with a process, serve an abstraction, or hold loving fellowship with a law.
102:7.4 (1126.4) True, 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.
102:7.5 (1126.5) The intellectual earmark of religion is certainty; the philosophical characteristic is consistency; the social fruits are love and service.
102:7.6 (1126.6) The 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.
102:7.7 (1127.1) If 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.
102:7.8 (1127.2) Only 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.
102:7.9 (1127.3) If 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.
102:7.10 (1127.4) Of God, the most inescapable of all presences, the most real of all facts, the most living of all truths, the most loving of all friends, and the most divine of all values, we have the right to be the most certain of all universe experiences.
8. The Evidences of Religion
102:8.1 (1127.5) The highest evidence of the reality and efficacy of religion consists in the fact of human experience; namely, that man, naturally fearful and suspicious, innately endowed with a strong instinct of self-preservation and craving survival after death, is willing fully to trust the deepest interests of his present and future to the keeping and direction of that power and person designated by his faith as God. That is the one central truth of all religion. As to what that power or person requires of man in return for this watchcare and final salvation, no two religions agree; in fact, they all more or less disagree.
102:8.2 (1127.6) Regarding the status of any religion in the evolutionary scale, it may best be judged by its moral judgments and its ethical standards. The higher the type of any religion, the more it encourages and is encouraged by a constantly improving social morality and ethical culture. We cannot judge religion by the status of its accompanying civilization; we had better estimate the real nature of a civilization by the purity and nobility of its religion. Many of the world’s most notable religious teachers have been virtually unlettered. The wisdom of the world is not necessary to an exercise of saving faith in eternal realities.
102:8.3 (1127.7) The difference in the religions of various ages is wholly dependent on the difference in man’s comprehension of reality and on his differing recognition of moral values, ethical relationships, and spirit realities.
102:8.4 (1127.8) Ethics is the external social or racial mirror which faithfully reflects the otherwise unobservable progress of internal spiritual and religious developments. Man has always thought of God in the terms of the best he knew, his deepest ideas and highest ideals. Even historic religion has always created its God conceptions out of its highest recognized values. Every intelligent creature gives the name of God to the best and highest thing he knows.
102:8.5 (1128.1) Religion, when reduced to terms of reason and intellectual expression, has always dared to criticize civilization and evolutionary progress as judged by its own standards of ethical culture and moral progress.
102:8.6 (1128.2) While personal religion precedes the evolution of human morals, it is regretfully recorded that institutional religion has invariably lagged behind the slowly changing mores of the human races. Organized religion has proved to be conservatively tardy. The prophets have usually led the people in religious development; the theologians have usually held them back. Religion, being a matter of inner or personal experience, can never develop very far in advance of the intellectual evolution of the races.
102:8.7 (1128.3) But religion is never enhanced by an appeal to the so-called miraculous. The quest for miracles is a harking back to the primitive religions of magic. True religion has nothing to do with alleged miracles, and never does revealed religion point to miracles as proof of authority. Religion is ever and always rooted and grounded in personal experience. And your highest religion, the life of Jesus, was just such a personal experience: man, mortal man, seeking God and finding him to the fullness during one short life in the flesh, while in the same human experience there appeared God seeking man and finding him to the full satisfaction of the perfect soul of infinite supremacy. And that is religion, even the highest yet revealed in the universe of Nebadon — the earth life of Jesus of Nazareth.
102:8.8 (1128.4) [Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]