Life, real life, material life, has always threatened to neutralize Christianity, as it did other religions, only the traditional fundamentalists seem to hold on. Religious people bemoan this and are forever trying to pull people away from the material world.
The process of elaborate intellectual rationalization took place, trying to save religion, but it was really attempting to deal with the old duality between the spiritual and the material. How do you manage real life, marriage, birth, competition, when the great religious leaders like Christ and Buddha tell you to repudiate the world, but then complicate things by telling you to love or show compassion for the poor world enslaved with material desires?
The problem is always with the duality, and the Great Spiritual Blockade against the material world. Only identification with the God Within was endlessly defined, only the Involutionary Inward Path was allowed. And no matter how elaborate and even beautiful were the attempts to harmonize the rejection of the material world (St Thomas Aquinas was beautiful in this way), the powerful call of material life and the neutralization of religion could not be stopped.
The mission and message of the Evolutionary Christian Church is that the sacred path of material life seeks to evolve to Godhood, the Godhood first seen or identified with in the Inward Path of the Revealed Religions. This sacred path not only closes the spiritual/material duality, it stops the neutralization of religion. Our central point is that while we think the Latin and Sanskrit establishment is holding captive religion, and the people, we do not reject the Involuntary Inward Path of the religious establishment. We seek to add the Evolutionary Outward Path in our Twofold Path to the Real Godhood we all seek.
The theology of the future will need to express the sacred power of the evolution of the material world to Godhood, along with the ancient identification with the God Within. This is Revitalized Conservatism, not revolution.
The process of elaborate intellectual rationalization took place, trying to save religion, but it was really attempting to deal with the old duality between the spiritual and the material. How do you manage real life, marriage, birth, competition, when the great religious leaders like Christ and Buddha tell you to repudiate the world, but then complicate things by telling you to love or show compassion for the poor world enslaved with material desires?
The problem is always with the duality, and the Great Spiritual Blockade against the material world. Only identification with the God Within was endlessly defined, only the Involutionary Inward Path was allowed. And no matter how elaborate and even beautiful were the attempts to harmonize the rejection of the material world (St Thomas Aquinas was beautiful in this way), the powerful call of material life and the neutralization of religion could not be stopped.
The mission and message of the Evolutionary Christian Church is that the sacred path of material life seeks to evolve to Godhood, the Godhood first seen or identified with in the Inward Path of the Revealed Religions. This sacred path not only closes the spiritual/material duality, it stops the neutralization of religion. Our central point is that while we think the Latin and Sanskrit establishment is holding captive religion, and the people, we do not reject the Involuntary Inward Path of the religious establishment. We seek to add the Evolutionary Outward Path in our Twofold Path to the Real Godhood we all seek.
The theology of the future will need to express the sacred power of the evolution of the material world to Godhood, along with the ancient identification with the God Within. This is Revitalized Conservatism, not revolution.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment