Rejoice, rejoice, daughter of Zion, shout aloud, daughter of Jerusalem; for see, your king is coming to you, his cause won, his victory gained, humble and mounted on an ass, on a foal, the young of a she-ass. (Zechariah 9:9)
HUMILITY IS NOT an assertion, or even a real conviction, of our own intrinsic worthlessness in the scheme of things, nor is it a belief in the unimportance of our own opinions. People who put forward their views tentatively and with apparent diffidence, stressing how inexpert they are in the matter under discussion, are in fact exalting themselves in the eyes of others. They wish to appear as paragons of modesty in order to impress other people. Humility is often a pose adopted by those who want to gain the attention of their fellows. This attitude is an important pointer to a deep inner resentment the person feels because of the neglect he believes is his lot, but it has no spiritual value. No opinion should bear any trace of self-abasement; if it is worth stating, it brings with it a personal authority. And no person is to be dismissed as trivial no matter how unattractive he may appear and of what little account his views on life may seem to the world. Humility must not, in other words, be equated with self-effacement.
True humility is closer to self-forgetfulness. The really humble person is unaware of his own importance - or lack of it - in the wider issue of life. A humble person is receptive, and is always capable of learning something new. His mentor is life itself, and his instructors are those numerous other people, usually dull and unprepossessing, who crowd in on him day by day. The antithesis of humility is therefore not so much self-exaltation as pride. Pride so closes a person in on himself that he cannot receive anything from another source. The basis of pride is, unfortunately, in the great majority of instances, an undervaluation of the individual by the society, including his parents, which nurtured him. Having no rea1 faith in his own worth, he becomes so vulnerable to the casual: assaults of the world that he shuts himself off from painful social intercourse by fashioning a hard, barely penetrable shell around himself. Until this facade of self-sufficiency is demolished by a calamity so great that it forces him to seek succour from the outside world, he lives in a private realm of lonely self regard, secure in the knowledge that he is the possessor of the real truth and needs no one else to support him. In this way he is spared the wounding challenge of any new relationship. Only the proverbial fall can start the process of regeneration in a proud person's soul.
The fruits of pride are insensitivity to others, arrogance, self-righteousness, and an inability to receive love. Whatever goodwill is shown to a proud person is dismissed as patronage. There can be no growth where pride dominates - whether the growth is of the mind or the soul. Pride is a morass which holds the individual in a fixed attitude of mind and prevents him joining his fellows in the greater affairs of life. Pride, in fact, invalidates, indeed prevents, any effective personal relationship. A proud person cannot tolerate the possibility of his being mistaken. It is essential for his mental stability that he be always proved in the right. Proud people often afflict the courts of religion and the temples of worship, while pride is often the predominant attitude of those who aspire to spiritual knowledge.
Many people who are undoubtedly gifted intellectually or psychically are dominated by pride. Even considerable gifts of healing are often thwarted because their possessor, forgetting he is merely an instrument of God's grace, lacks the humility to learn from those with a different approach to life from his own, and especially from those who come to him for counsel or for healing. The Holy Spirit makes His home in the humble soul who can receive Him in dedicated service. In turn He sanctifies the natural gifts entrusted to that person. The Spirit cannot enter the locked heart of a proud man. "Here I stand knocking at the door; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come and sit down to supper with him and he with me." (Revelation 3:20) It needs to be said that this knocking is not only from outside the person's consciousness, but also from within the soul where the Spirit dwells in silence. The proud man is too full of his own riches to have room in the inn of his own soul for the Spirit of God. In the words of the Magnificat: "The hungry he has satisfied with good things, the rich sent empty away." (Luke 1:53)
It is not the riches themselves - whether material, intellectual, or psychical - that are harmful, but the attitude of exclusiveness, or pride, that they can engender in those who believe they possess them. The law is that "you received without cost; give without charge." (Matthew 10:8) As we give, so we are replenished and enriched. Those empty of self-regard are full of the Spirit of God, while those who use their talents with enterprise gain a double portion of their value. Those who bury their talents are diminished, for they have not taken the opportunity God offered them to grow in stature both by the experience of life and by fruitful relationships with other people. It is also possible to use one's talents in a self-centred way, so as to enslave those whom one attempts to counsel or to heal. This is where pride is augmented by the sin of arrogance, and it is a constant hazard of all those engaged in spiritual, religious, and healing works.
The person who acts arrogantly is usually blissfully unaware of his deeper motives, and is earnestly intent on saving people from their sins or their ignorance (the two often merge). This defect is one of insensitivity to others and disregard for their opinions and way of life, which he seldom has the courtesy, let alone the patience, to investigate. He cannot, in other words, relate properly to other people, and treats them simply as objects on which to expend his charity rather in the same way as a certain type of idealistic theorist treats humanity in his well-meaning, but overbearing social or educational experimentation. There is an arrogant disregard for the finer feelings of other people, which results from a proud, cold, self- enclosed consciousness, and all who conflict with this self-enclosure or threaten its security are treated as fools or scoundrels.
This fundamental error in social relationships is an ever-present hazard in the lives of all those who are devoted to a particular system of thought, be it atheistic or deeply religious. In the case of an atheistic humanist, his view of life allows for no principle outside human reason, therefore all progress depends on the skill and ingenuity of the mind. It is inevitable, with this view, that those who are the best developed technically and intellectually should govern the lives of those who are apparently less gifted in these respects - or more probably less assertive and articulate. The end-result is a dictatorship. The trends in those political systems that have dispensed with God are now sufficiently well known - they do not attract those of us who value personal freedom. Man's insolent pride, which is called hubris, is the demonic element in the world, and its evil repercussions extend far beyond human society.
The same judgement is unfortunately true of the world's major religions. Each has on occasion been the agency of great tyranny. Their protagonists have restricted human thought and curtailed basic liberty in the name of God. No major denomination is free from this reproach. I have already described in a previous section the weakness in a certain type of religious devotee that makes him act in an authoritarian manner: a deep inner insecurity. Only a conviction that he is in possession of the whole truth can arrest the inroads of subtle doubt which, if allowed free rein, would undermine his belief in himself. It is assuredly good to know that even if things are not going well with one on a material level, one is at least secure spiritually and destined for great things, if not now, at least when one dies.
This approach to religious truth has been parodied well by the Marxist, but the reply to this criticism has not even now been fully formulated by many Christians with a strong missionary zeal. Many theists have accepted the social criticism of Marxism by insisting on social and economic justice, which is surely all to the good. But the aim of religion is something more than the attainment of an earthly utopia. It is the transformation of humanity in the likeness of God - seen in Christian terms in the form of Jesus Christ. The one important insight that Marxist social criticism has to offer is that this transformation must begin at once, in the world in which we find ourselves, and not in some other place and condition in a problematical life after death. By this I do not imply any scepticism about survival of the essential pan of the personality when the "outer man" finally perishes. I personally have had enough intimate experiences of the life beyond death not to be seriously disturbed by the possibility of complete annihilation of the individual when the physical body dies. And yet the further I progress on the spiritual path, the less concerned do I become about the state of the person in the life hereafter. The aim of the spiritual life is to prepare in each moment of present time for the full development of a real person, so that when death does finally occur, something of real worth may have been fashioned to continue an inevitable post-mortem existence. The inevitability of survival of death is a measure of God's love for His creatures that which He has created He will not allow to perish. But what actually does survive death depends in no small measure on the life of the individual while on earth.
These two concepts are, I feel, vital for a real understanding of the meaning of life and the work of the Spirit of God in man's sanctification: the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body. The first is a Hellenistic insight, and comes into Hebrew thought fully in the apocryphal Book of Wisdom believed to have been written some 50 years before the Christian era. The second is Hebraic; when the Jews finally did come to a belief in survival of death, they could envisage this only in terms of a resurrection of the whole person, body and soul. This is stated categorically in the Book of Daniel (12:2) and in the apocryphal Second Book of Maccabees (7:9; 12:38-45 and 14:46), both of which were probably written about 150 years before the Christian era. There is a tendency among orthodox Christians to disparage the Hellenistic view of immortality and to exalt the Hebraic insight about resurrection. On the other hand those with Spiritualistic, Theosophical, and Hindu-Buddhist beliefs have no use whatsoever for a bodily resurrection. On a crudely physical level, they are surely right. St Paul himself says that flesh and blood can never possess the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 15:50) On the other hand, the objection that many Christians have to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is that it is too mechanical: it seems to imply that the soul automatically survives by virtue of its intrinsic merit. In this respect, the Christian objection is valid and worthy of deep consideration. The doctrine of the resurrection of the body would, it is said, place the gift of survival in God's hands: only those who were worthy would enjoy a resurrection, whereas the remainder would either perish finally or else be cast forever into the outer darkness where there is wailing and grinding of teeth - to use a symbolism loved by St Matthew in his Gospel.
Neither view of survival is, in my view, adequate on its own, yet each possesses profound insights that cannot be discarded. The soul's immortality seems to be, as I have already stated, an inevitable result of the love God has for His creatures. Assuredly it is not merited by the creature, but determined by the Creator. Love cannot envisage the total destruction of any finite being. God, who judges the heart, knows more than man ever can, the root of the evil in any person. What we call sin is usually a compound of environmental deprivation and individual inadequacy. In any instance, one of these two is bound to predominate, but in even the most evil person there is surely some spark of goodness, for God created him also. Therefore I look for the redemption of all creatures after much tribulation in an intermediate state of being. I derive this hope not so much from the Bible (which is equivocal on this matter) as from my knowledge of God's unfailing love.
But God's love is not indiscriminate or sentimental. It is stern and demanding. God will, speaking figuratively, not lift a finger to help someone who is on the downward moral path until he himself prays fervently for help. And this true prayer comes only at the depth of great suffering. Until the person has faced his own responsibilities with honesty and courage, he cannot know God's love, because he will not avail himself of it. Such a person can find, to his consternation, that he has survived death in a formless state. He has built no spiritual body from the good deeds and noble thoughts that should have been his while he was on earth. Such a person quite literally survives as an earth-bound wraith, if he is not surrounded by the impenetrable darkness of the lowest plane of the after-life, which we call hell. This is a dire punishment, but the one who inflicts it is the person himself by virtue of the destructive life he has led. God does not punish that person. Indeed, it is God's greatest desire that all who are lost should return home as the Prodigal Son did. But until the sinner comes to his senses, he will remain in spiritual isolation and darkness. I believe, however, that there is an opportunity for all discarnate personalities to repent even in the after-life, and then the blessed Communion of Saints can befriend them and initiate the process of redemption.
This full process will require much purification and learning in the life of the world to come, but there is always hope that, in the course of a time outside our time, this person, cleansed of all guilt by the love of God at last fully accepted, will be able to fashion a real spiritual body composed of noble thoughts, loving attitudes, and the fruit of unremitting service in other realms but always to finite beings. We are indeed being born anew each day. "Though our outward humanity is in decay, yet day by day we are inwardly renewed." (2 Corinthians 4:16) It does not seem to me to be unlikely that this process of renewal, or rebirth into a nobler frame and a higher consciousness, proceeds even after the physical body has been discarded. And in the end even the physical body that marks our time of humiliation as we grow decrepit and old is to be transfigured, resurrected, and brought into the eternal glory of spiritual essence. This is the far-off event to which the whole creation moves in stumbling steps, led by a little child whose name is Christ, the ever-renewing Word of God.
To sum up an intricate, but important matter: the soul's immortality is assured because God loves His creatures, and will not let any perish. This free grace is not dependent on the creature's character but on God's unfailing mercy. On the other hand, the body of spiritual substance that clothes the soul, gives it form, and sends it into the greater life beyond death, is a product of the life the person has led while he was alive in the flesh of this world. The quality of our spiritual body is determined by the quality of our thoughts, words, and actions now. We continue to build this body during every experience, every encounter, every sacrifice, every moment of our present life, which is also eternal life.
This being so, what is the duty of any religious person to his unawakened brethren? Should he be exhorting them to be converted to the truth, to God, to Christ, so that they may be saved from the wrath to come, both in this life and the life of the world to come? Or should he mind his own business and let the unbeliever get on with his own life? I feel that neither approach is wholly right. The first is arrogant and has as its motivating force fear and punishment. It not only gives a wrong account of the nature of God, equating Him with the wrathful potentiate of the early Old Testament rather than the Lord of love typified by Jesus, but it also lays too great a stress on individual salvation. It must be said directly that the person who lives according to rules and precepts, who affirms credal statements, and follows prescribed rituals in order to attain heavenly status is not leading the good life. The centre of his world is his unredeemed personal self striving desperately for immortality and making use of religion to attain this end. The situation is not so very different in its essence from that of the ambitious young person who does the right things and cultivates the right people with the unashamed purpose of getting on in the world. Religions that stress the urgency for personal salvation in these terms of reference do not lead to the fulfilment of a complete personality. They err also in seeing situations either in white or in black; the reconciliation that understanding and compassion introduce is foreign to their outlook. There is an arrogant disregard for other points of view, a static attitude to developing situations, and an inability to accommodate the inflow of the Holy Spirit. In other words, a rigid view of salvation, no matter how doctrinally based it is, limits the freedom of the human mind and fails in its purpose of healing the person.
The converse attitude, of leaving other people to their own spiritual devices and pursuing one's own religious path, is certainly less objectionable and shows greater respect for points of view other than one's own. But it has a certain coldness and detachment about it, for it lacks the warmth of true human relationship. If one believes one has really found something of supreme value in one's life, one's joy is such that one cannot help but impart the good news to others. The good news, or gospel, that Jesus came to proclaim was that the time had come; the Kingdom of God was upon the world. Now was the time for repentance, for a change in heart. (Mark 1:15) His ministry was directed to making that repentance possible and to showing what the kingdom of God meant in worldly living.
Jesus came, as St John saw so clearly, that men might have life, and have it in all its fullness. (10:10) Those of us who follow Him, or for that matter any other religious teacher, will be judged by the measure of fullness we show in our own lives and the fullness we bring to the lives of others. Exhortations, threats and claims do not impress those with intelligence and discernment. It is the fruit of spiritual living that makes the claims valid, and the fruit is a present change in the lives of people. As we lead our present lives, so the future is determined; this applies not only to this world but to the after-life also. The urgency of the Gospel (or any system of religious doctrine) is not to save people from the wrath to come, but to release them from the bondage of fear, impotence, hatred and purposelessness that is their present lot. They must be brought into a creative relationship with their present circumstances. Hel1 is not primarily a realm where people who have lived sinful lives find themselves when they die. It is first and foremost a very present state of desolation, of isolation, of perpetual, meaningless existence that many of us are experiencing at this present moment. It is the antithesis of the Kingdom of God that Jesus came to proclaim. It will most certainly persist in the future and be carried on in the life after death until there is a change in heart of the person. Even those whose lives appear on the surface to be enviable and outwardly successful are often, if not to some extent always, in some inner difficulty, some hidden distress, the victim of incipient fear and desolation. Only the very foolish would equate outer prosperity with inner peace. The first is a passing event, liable to be followed at any time by misfortune and humiliation; the second is a spiritual blessing that will persist even during the inevitable misfortunes that afflict mortal life.
Jesus said to His followers who were arguing about their respective greatness: "If any one wants to be first, he must make himself last of all and servant of all." (Mark 9:35) If we want to share the good news with those outside our circle, we must follow the call of the Holy Spirit to communicate joyously with the wretched of the earth, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to release those in prison, as is said in Isaiah 61:1. The captives are those who are enslaved to the things of this world and the opinions of other people; the prison is our own mind, where we constantly re-live o1d patterns of thought or rehearse past scores against those who may have hurt us many years ago. People who live in a past world of resentment do not realise that time has gone by and that the years have brought a degree of maturity to all concerned. In all probability those against whom they bear a grudge are now as responsible in their outlook and as tortured in their sensitivity as they are themselves. Only the greater love of God brought to such warped souls by the presence and actions of those whose lives are devoted to Him can unlock the prison of the unconscious and free the person from the captivity of past memories.
It is customary in the present climate of thought to interpret captivity and imprisonment in political and social terms, but the truly spiritual person knows that all enslavement begins in the person, from whom it proceeds into perverse social and economic action. No wonder Jesus condemned those who cleaned the outside of cup and dish while the inside was left full of robbery and self indulgence. (Matthew 23:25) Those who attempt with arrogant self-assertiveness to put the world aright should look at themselves first. "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye, with never a thought for the great plank in your own? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye', when all the time there is a plank in your own? You hypocrite! First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's." (Matthew 7: 3-5) If only the political idealists and dogmatic religionists would heed Jesus' words, we might begin to see heaven created on our solid earth!
These are some of the ways in which the gospel is proclaimed and the reality of Christ brought into the lives of men, even if they refuse to acknowledge His name directly.
In Carl Jung's-autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, his therapeutic ethos is stated as follows:- "I never try to convert a patient to anything, and never exercise a compulsion. What matters most to me is that the patient should reach his own view of things. Under my treatment a pagan becomes a pagan, and a Christian a Christian, a Jew a Jew, according to what his destiny prescribed for him." This dispassionate view of the relativity of belief cannot be expected to please a dogmatic follower of a particular religion who has no doubt that his scheme of salvation is the only right one. But Jung is nearer the truth than such a person, and he has in practice been a finer agent of healing than the great majority of protagonists of religion of whom I am aware. We must eschew the ego-inflating temptation of trying to convert a person to our beliefs; we must do all in our power to help him become an authentic human being. This is a hard saying for those whose religion is imbued with a strong missionary commitment. In fact, this point of view does not diminish our duty to mission; on the contrary, it sharpens it and makes it a spiritual task with a healing basis. But the mission is to heal a broken world and revive a flagging people, not to enrol large numbers of people into a particular religious denomination.
What I am saying is this: the word salvation should be interpreted in terms of bringing the soul - and indeed the whole person - to a state of health, or wholeness. The concepts of salvation as the deliverance of the person from sin and its consequences so that he can be saved from the torments of hell and gain admission to heaven, is a negative approach to the healing process and gives priority of the fear of God's wrath rather than the wonder of His unremitting love. Those who can lead a person to greater health are those who will spread their gospel most convincingly. They will have no need of coercion to bring others to a spiritual understanding. On the other hand, those who have been brought to healing by them will demand to know their secret. This is how humility works to the glory of God, while arrogant claims merely estrange the sensitive and the intelligent from contact with spiritual things.
All of us who are aware of spiritual reality desire above all else to bring our brothers to the light. But we must beware lest our zeal excludes the Holy Spirit, Who alone can effect the sudden change in consciousness that is the basis of a real conversion, or turning to the light. Revivalistic techniques work on the emotions of psychologically unbalanced people, and can certainly effect mass conversions to a sectarian view of God, but this harvest of converts should not blind us to the inadequacy of the spiritual outlook evoked in those who declare themselves for God. Those people are sick in spirit. While there is none among us who could claim a perfect bill of spiritual health - for each of us has his own deficiency which prevents him being a whole person - there is at least a tendency amongst those guided by the Holy Spirit to grow into the light of God's love. Those people who are convened to a faith by the experience of being delivered from the wrath to come by personal commitment to a God whose chief attribute is power, tend to remain spiritually sick. Their inner balance depends on a particular doctrinal formulation that does not change in emphasis, and they remain arrogant, intolerant protagonists of a faith that does not grow. They cannot bear the searing fire of the Holy Spirit Who enters the depths of our being and opens up the dark places of the unconscious. Fortunately the Holy Spirit does often make His presence felt in such people, when circumstances in their lives effect a subtle change in their consciousness. Some may have to experience a complete loss of "faith" before they can come to God in love and peace. Others who are more fortunate gradually leave behind the imprisoning doors of compulsive (and compulsory) belief in a particular doctrinal position, and grow progressively into that inner freedom which is the criterion of true spirituality, for "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." (2 Corinthians 3:17)
Can an acknowledgement of the sanctity of the human will and conscience be reconciled with a commitment to bring people to Christ? I believe this is the only full commitment, but Christ is larger than the mind of man. Indeed, we all have to enter the mind of Christ through grace effected by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. If, to return to Jung's therapeutic ethos, a pagan were to become an authentic pagan he would at least bear witness to the four cardinal virtues - fortitude, justice, prudence and temperance. As he progressed in his own life, so the three evangelical virtues - faith, hope and love - would become more urgent, and finally he would know the authentic Christ within himself. The same argument would hold for those who are committed to a higher religion, for as they became more complete people, so they would know the supremacy of the Christ within Who was revealed outwardly in the form of the man called Jesus. And those who proudly call themselves Christians would need to undergo exactly the same transformation, for not everyone who calls Jesus "Lord" will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but only those who do the will of God.
The terrible history of Christian persecution and fratricidal strife emphasises this truth far too eloquently for any complacency on the part of those who minister through Christ to the world. The world does not yet know Christ, although isolated saints of all the great religious traditions have had communion with Him. St John says in his first letter (3:2), "Here and now, dear friends, we are God's children; what we shall be has not yet been disclosed, but we know that when it is disclosed we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is." He goes on to say, "Everyone who has this hope before him purifies himself, as Christ is pure." The way of purification is ceaseless prayer, for the agent of purity is the Holy Spirit and not our own selfish wills trying to make ourselves outwardly presentable to God, while within we contain a cesspit of evil desires and selfish motives.
The true Christ who shows us the way to the Father is one Who gives up His life for the world, Who humbles himself to take on the ignominy of the meanest criminal, Who experiences the tortures of the damned. He is the Spirit of humility. No one comes to God except by the way that He revealed when He was with us in the flesh.
The call is always the same. It is "Follow me".