| Dated: Aug. 01/98 |
Unity Views on....
1. God
- Most of us, from our earliest learning experiences, have been taught that God is a supreme “man”. We have been told that “God created man in his own image”, and we have not realized that this image is male and female. Not fully understanding our own origin, we have easily decided to create God in man’s image.
Consequently, we have made of God a “superman”. Inasmuch as God has been around since the beginning of time, ”He” would naturally have to be a very old man; so, we have given “Him” a flowing beard. Since the Judeo-Christian concept of God came out of a patriarchal (male-dominated) society, we have learned to always, refer to God with male pronouns: He, Him, His.
Our teaching further told us that the abode of God is the kingdom of heaven. When we speak of heaven, we think of it as being “up”. Therefore, we have assumed that heaven is in the sky, that perhaps God dwells somewhere on the periphery of our universe.
Some early cultures were multi-god oriented. These gods were usually made visible through carved or sculpted “idols”, and they often were related to every day living. Some societies worshipped the elements of nature as their gods. Elaborate rituals were established in order to appease these gods and, consequently, to control the elements. Other societies worshipped female deities, undoubtedly because of the woman’s ability to give birth, which was tremendously awe-inspiring to primitive people. The worship of these gods and goddesses became the way of “pagans” with the advent of the one Hebrew God, Father of all.
There are places on this earth where it is thought that God can be contacted more easily and more readily than others. These have been designated as “sacred” places, and shrines have been built on many of them. Many persons have made long and difficult pilgrimages to such places, in an effort to find and draw near to the presence of God.
All in all, we have made God most inaccessible. We have made “Him” into a “Man” with human attitudes and emotions magnified to supernatural proportions. We have placed the kingdom of God so far away that we do not really know how to “get there”. We have made of God one whose love is greatly desired and whose wrath is to be feared. We have given God a whimsical personality: sometimes “He” answers our prayers and sometimes “He” does not. We have made God one who seems most pleased when we come to “Him” as praying beggars and sinners.
Can this truly be God....the God of all creation? Can this be the God who spoke to the heart of Jesus Christ and said,”This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased”? Can this be the God, represented by Jesus Christ, who healed the minds and bodies of people, who provided them with food when they were hungry, and who has blessed and inspired so many people down through the centuries? Can this be the God who said,”Before they call I will answer”?
Perhaps we need to take a look at this concept of God, to determine if this is really the God we worship. Is there an alternative to this concept, one that we can relate to in our daily life, in a contemporary sense? I believe there is.
When Jesus Christ spoke of God, He did not speak of a distant God; He said,”The Father is in me.” Could God be any closer than that? If God was in Jesus Christ, is this the same God in all persons? The argument against believing that God indwells each of us is that Jesus Christ was singled out by God for a special spiritual destiny. And so He was.
Still, the Bible clearly states that in the beginning God created all people - “man, male and female” - in the divine image and likeness. It is also written,“God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” In Genesis we learn two very important things: God created us in the likeness of divinity and pronounced that creation good.
The Spirit, the breath of God, is in us. We do not have to put in a long-distance call to God everytime we pray. We are not called upon to make long pilgrimages to sacred places. God is within us, completely accessible to us. We may contact God by turning quietly within ourselves. This is what Jesus Christ meant when He said,”But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
Since this is what Jesus Christ taught about God, it is difficult to understand how Christians have taken an indwelling Spirit of goodness and shaped it into a supreme “Man” in a distant kingdom.
Does this mean that God is found only within people? Not at all. As Creator, God is imbued in all creation. The presence of God is not limited to people; but the presence of God finds aware and refined expression through people. “God slumbers in the rocks. God stirs in the flowers. God awakens in Man.” The mountains reflect the majesty of God. A calm lake carries the message of the serenity of God. A sleeping infant reminds us of the uniqueness of God. The flaming red of a full-blown rose tells us of the beauty of God.
We could well say that God is where we find God. God is the principle responsible for all creation. The Principle cannot abandon the creation, without the creation ceasing to be. So, truly, God is in all things. There is no situation or thing on earth so mundane that it does not bear witness to the presence of God. There is no darkness so dark that the light of understanding cannot shine in it. There is no experience so critical that an activity of this all-pervading Spirit cannot harmonize it.
This, then, is your alternative: Instead of a distant, inaccessible hard-to please God, the God really represented by Jesus Christ is a God of healing and prosperity - an accommodating God, a God for whom no task is either too large or too small, a God who is “nearer than hands and feet, closer than breathing.” This God is not a temperamental old man, but an indwelling Spirit. ever eager to find expression through creation - through you.
This item is an excerpt from the book "Alternatives" by William L. Fisher, and reproduced with the express permission of Unity School of Christianity, Unity Village, MO.
2. Jesus Christ
- Traditionally, Jesus has been seen chiefly as a figure to be worshipped. Although no one can say for sure what He looked like, this has not inhibited sculptors and painters from trying to depict His image, nor have writers been stopped from creating many word pictures of Him.
Many of the great churches of the world have paintings and/or statues of Jesus, and there are people who go to these representations to pray. We have made of Jesus Christ a God, to be known only in awe and reverence. But He did not want this:”Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good.” At no time did He tell His followers to worship Him; instead, He gave that ringing command, “Follow me.”
Still, we are awed by what He did for mankind. Jesus Christ showed all of us that we each have direct access to God. He did not walk across the land, saying, “Look what I, as the Son of God, can do.” Rather He walked among the people, telling them, in effect, “Here is what you, as a child of God can do.” At one point He even said,”Is it not written in your law,’I said, you are gods’?” He told us of our true estate: we are reflections of God Almighty.
But it has been difficult for us to grasp such a lofty concept, for we have been taught by others that only Jesus was the offspring of God. It was He who healed ”every disease and every infirmity.” It was He who raised Lazarus from the dead. It was He who multiplied the loaves and fishes. It was He who told parables that have lived for ages. It was He who was resurrected from the dead. We may ask,“Can any other person do such things?”
The answer, according to Jesus, is yes. Even if no one has yet done them, we can, for Jesus said,”He who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do.” Jesus believed that we could do such things. The problem is that we don’t believe. Belief that can perform miracles is the key factor in the doing.
Up until now we have worshipped and adored Jesus Christ, even though there is Biblical evidence that He was not at all comfortable with this response to His teachings. What is our alternative? If we are not only to worship Jesus Christ, then how shall we regard Him? Why not do what He asked us to do - follow Him? His greatest role was that of Way-Shower.
A mystic is a person who believes that he or she has direct access to God. In this respect, Jesus Christ was a total mystic. But He wanted all of us to understand that we too are mystics. He wanted us to know that if we follow His teachings, we will also work the works of God.
In order to do this, we need to go back to the direct teachings of Jesus. We must not permit ourselves to become overly concerned with what either the church or its leaders have said about Him. The important thing is what Jesus Himself taught. We have become more concerned with the religion about Jesus Christ than with the religion of Jesus Christ.
How do we know how to follow Him? The answers are simple; activating the answers in our lives will be more difficult. We need only to go to the gospel accounts of His life, study them carefully, and make a sincere attempt to activate them in our own lives and affairs. This is our great alternative.
What are some of the general tenets of His teachings? What would be life-changing for us to follow?
The idea of healing was central to Jesus’ ministry. The Bible records that He healed “all manner of disease”. Nothing is incurable in the sight of God; therefore, nothing was incurable in the healing ministry of Jesus Christ. If we believe we can do the works that He did, nothing shall be incurable to us, for we too will be working in the flow of the power of God. Therefore, one of our alternatives is to believe that, when we pray believing, there is an activity of healing working through us. We have the divine right to be well and strong, according to the example of Jesus Christ.
The idea of love was uppermost in Jesus’ teachings. His example shows us that His love was so great that it embraced even His enemies. He instructed us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. If we are to our exercise our alternative and really follow Him, our lives must be dominated by love. There would then be no room in our minds and hearts for thoughts and feelings of anything less than love - no hate, no envy, no jealousy, no malice. This may be the most important alternative that we follow: to be completely motivated with compassion. This makes of us radiating centers of divine love. As such, we make our greatest contribution to the world. When the time comes that the world is dominated by love, war shall be impossible. Many of the problems that confront the people of the world today will dissolve before the intense warmth of God’s love, a love that finds expression through God’s people.
The idea of faith was also exemplified by Jesus Christ. He referred to faith as the mountain-mover in our lives. He taught that when people have sufficient faith, there is no problem in life that cannot be overcome. He conquered even death, through his faith in eternal life. As our Way-Shower He demonstrated to us that we cannot live without faith. As we take up the quality of faith as a hallmark for our own lives, we find that we have the key to more abundant living. Faith has been referred to as a “key” to open life’s doors. It truly is! A divinely inspired faith gives the vision and strength to scale the waiting hills of life and to know the exaltation of living at the peak of human capabilities.
Obviously the teachings of Jesus are intricate and extensive. But if you will tale the time to delve deeply into those teachings, you will find that they are totally applicable to contemporary living. If, in addition to whatever feelings of awe and reverence you have toward Jesus, you will also seek to follow His teachings, you will find this experience a life-changing one.
Remember: Your alternative is to follow in His steps and to do so with an open mind and a sincere heart.
This item is an excerpt from the book "Alternatives" by William L. Fisher, and reproduced with the express permission of Unity School of Christianity, Unity Village, MO.
3. Male and Female
- One of the most prominent beliefs concerning mankind is that we were “conceived in iniquity and born in sin”. We have accepted this thinking of ourselves as incurable sinners, so much accepted it that it is a difficult exercise to entertain an alternative to this idea.
We have accepted, even concluded, that we are indelibly tainted with the original sin of Adam and Eve. But if we take the time to explore the Bible in depth, we will realize that the story of Adam and Eve is allegorical. It was composed after much of the rest of the Old Testament was recorded, designed to give a beginning to the story of human beings. We cannot deny that the story of creation is beautifully written, but we would do well to remind ourselves that it is man’s endeavor to write of his beginnings.
Many of us have been bombarded since childhood with the teaching that we are miserable sinners, resulting from the “fall of Adam”, and the implication has been that an entire lifetime would not be sufficient time to eradicate the taint of our sinfulness.
Is this our true estate? Are we doomed to spend our lifetime struggling to overcome the sin that we brought into this world at birth? Do we need to keep reminding ourselves (and God) of this sinfulness? Are there truly unforgivable sins? If we truly believed any of this, it would indeed seem that we are doomed. How can we ever surmount a burden of sin that is imposed upon us by the nature of our creation?
St. Paul shared this insight, teaching that we are “children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” What a glorious insight into the nature of man!
The ancient Hebrew King David also had such an insight; in one of his psalms we read:
What is a man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that dost care for him? Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor. Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet....
It is true that we have the right to take this alternative view of ourselves. The Bible is replete with references to the spiritual greatness of human beings. In our human inclination, we have tended to see ourselves as we appear to be, rather than as the true spiritual masterpieces we are.
But the time has come to change all that, for us to begin to appreciate the nature of our creation. The time has come for us to set aside the old and negative opinions we have accepted of ourselves and others. Yes, the time has come to appreciate the glory of our true estate. We really have been/are created in the image and likeness of God! There is a divine light that glows within each of us.
Jesus told us that we ought not to hide our light under a bushel. Rather, we should set it in a high place for all the world to see. That is our divine destiny - to be a light unto the world. The knowledge of this destiny is the viable alternative to thinking of ourselves as miserable sinners. “let your light so shine!” Accept this challenge and let your light of divinity show all people that not only are you a true child of God, but they are too.
In a moment of great inspiration, William Shakespeare wrote: “What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god!”
Do you feel this way about yourself? Surely this is how God feels about you. We all need God in our lives, but we also must know that God needs us. How will God refine expression on earth if not through people - male and female? We are vehicles through which God is able to express and be conscious on earth. Can you accept the responsibility for this thinking? If you can and will, magnificent qualities will find expression through you. Your life will be changes into a glorious expression of exciting goodness. It is not a kind of goodness that will inhibit you, but one that will expand you. You will begin to feel the real possibilities of life.
There is also the thought that God blesses some people more than others, that God plays favorites. We look around us and see others who seem to be more favorably endowed than we are. If we have this feeling, we need to recall the important Bible message, “God shows no partiality”. This means that God looks upon all of us with an equal eye. Some persons take advantage of their divinity more than others, and we are inclined to envy them; but we must not. We need not be concerned with them. Remember Jesus’ words: “What is that to you? Follow me!” Therefore, we must be about the business of acknowledging and expressing our own divinity.
When we do this, then we too are “about our Father’s business”, giving expression to the divine qualities with which each of us have been endowed.
Yes, this is our alternative: Rather than allowing ourselves to be mired in the concept of original sin, we can see ourselves as we really are. We are God’s children. Our souls are alight with the fire of heavenly virtues.
This item is an excerpt from the book "Alternatives" by William L. Fisher, and reproduced with the express permission of Unity School of Christianity, Unity Village, MO.
4. Prayer
- The most commonly used type of prayer is the prayer of supplication. We have somehow reached the conclusion that the only way we can have our prayers answered is to beg God. Consequently, we have devised prayers that confess to God our unworthiness to receive, and then we beg for the answer to be given to us anyway. This method of prayer is confusing.
It seems that we have concluded that we must fill the role of praying beggar, that we must always come to God with our “hats in our hands”, asking God to give us something that we do not have.
Some prayers are prayers of agony. There are times when we are in despair and desperately need divine intervention in our lives. The unfortunate thing about prayers of agony is that they are often not prayers at all - they are periods of concentrated worry, times when we give to God a recitation of our troubles. At no time during such a prayer do we demonstrate the openness and receptivity necessary for us to detect an answer, which is always positive.
Other prayers are perfunctory. On some occasion, to pray seems like the thing to do, so we pray. There is no real “heart” in our effort. This type of “praying” is sometimes done during a formal church service when we come to the point where the order of service calls for prayer, so we go through the motions of prayer. This is hardly conducive to real results.
Then there are prayers that are read. They are usually “stock” prayers, written in a prayer book, a pamphlet, or some other kind of formal leaflet. We read those prayers because they seem to have the right words in them. These are often composed by professional prayer composers and are beautiful indeed. But because they are someone else’s prayers, they often lack the feeling that comes from praying from the heart.
Next, there are prayers that are said - some people “say” a prayer and others “pray” a prayer. Obviously, it is more effective to pray our prayers. Real prayer is an entrance into spiritual communion with God. This can only be done when we pray our own heartfelt prayers, when we pray in order to feel a sense of kinship with God and to know the supreme Power who is eager to give us all that is for our highest good.
The Apostle Paul instructed us to “pray constantly”. How is this possible? We must go about our daily chores; we must earn our living and live our lives. Certainly we cannot spend all our time in the formal act of praying.
This is where the alternative comes in: it is possible to pray without ceasing. This kind of praying is not done on our knees, or with folded hands; the position of the body is unimportant. But the position of the mind is all-important. We can have a constant attitude of prayer. Perhaps that sounds difficult, if not impossible; but once you understand what a prayerful attitude is, it will not only be possible to attain but highly practical.
To begin with, you will need to ask yourself some questions: Do you appreciate the possibilities of life? Do you want to be of help to your friends - even to people you hardly know? Do you want to have a better quality of life? Do you want to have the ability to think so clearly that you can evolve solutions to all life’s problems? If you can answer “yes” to these questions, then prayer without ceasing will come easily for you, even though you must practice an attitude of prayer in order to become adept.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once defined prayer as “the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view”. Applying this definition of prayer to our own lives, we can see that prayer without ceasing is, in effect, keeping positive. It is no more than a simple but constant appreciation of life. Life has so many possibilities for us; those possibilities become personal experiences when we have conditioned our minds with appreciation. The mind then becomes similar to fertile soil into which good seeds (divine ideas) fall, to germinate, grow, and blossom into personal virtues.
Do not allow yourself to look at life from a valley. Lift up your thoughts and contemplate life from the highest point of view. From the high plateau of positive thinking, you are able to see life whole - with all its infinite possibilities. If you keep the high watch on your attitudes, you will be praying without ceasing and reaping the rewards.
To take your mind off yourself and pray for others will help in this process. There are two ways you can pray for others: you can use the “arms” or “wings” of prayer. When you use the arms of prayer, you embrace someone in particular, by thinking of him or her specifically in the highest way you are capable of doing. He or she is the specific target of your prayers and is thus taken into the arms of prayer.
When you use the wings of prayer, you simply send your prayers forth to all who are receptive to them. These are great, sweeping prayers, sent winging on their way to do the general good.
There is a passage in the Book of Job that says,”You will decide on a matter, and it will be established for you.” This is the prayer of a positive mind. It is not a beseeching God to hear; God always hears. This is a prayer of affirming good and accepting it with a grateful, confident heart.
As you condition your mind for receiving answers to prayers, be sure that you make an earnest effort to remove any mental debris you may have been collecting. A mind that is cluttered with negative thoughts cannot be receptive to divine answers. After your mental housecleaning, affirm the things you desire for yourself and for others; then be sure to spend some time in quiet listening. Too many people think that prayer is a monologue; this is not so. Prayer is a dialogue. After you have “let your requests be made known to God”, it is important that you spend time in silence, for receiving. The voice of God has been called the “still, small voice”. To hear it requires hushed expectancy. Give God an opportunity to take part in this prayer dialogue.
The alternatives here are several. Each of them affords you an opportunity to draw close in consciousness to God. When you are close in consciousness to God, you have a new self-appreciation, you are more assured, more considerate of others, and more Christlike in your actions. There is a special glow about those who are close to God; this is because you are special.
This item is an excerpt from the book "Alternatives" by William L. Fisher, and reproduced with the express permission of Unity School of Christianity, Unity Village, MO.
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