What and Where is God? A Human Answer to the Deep Religious Cry of the Modern SoulSwain, Richard La Rue
Religion
What and Where is God? A Human Answer to the Deep Religious Cry of the Modern Soul
Swain, Richard La Rue
Christianity; God (Christianity)
"So that is what you were talking about," I replied. "Well, I am
surprised. I thought you were modern men, and knew that there is no
other world. Science, philosophy, religion, and common sense, teach us
that there is but one world, a uni-verse. We now live in all the world
there is. But since we have not penetrated it very deeply, if your
friend had remarked that the minister was no more developed than you, or
that he had gone no deeper into the meaning of the universe than you, he
would at least have been on debatable ground. When, however, two men of
your opportunities could sit there and talk about another world, I am
ashamed of you. The universe is as much one as my watch is one. Every
particle of it enfolds us continually and never ceases to pour its
energies through us. Every part of the universe is beating upon us to
waken us, if possible, to its meaning. If I live for an eternity, I
shall be in the same world as now, and what I truthfully know about it
now will still be true after my body has decayed. God's one-world is the
only world."
No wonder that people become confused and mixed up with their plural
worlds, and broken fragments of worlds.
5. An inadequate conception of the Kingdom of God
More than a generation ago it came to us like a new discovery that while
Jesus rarely spoke of heaven, the expression, "Kingdom of Heaven," was
continually on His lips. This discovery turned the whole tide. And since
then, "The Kingdom of God on Earth" has been the theme of the Church.
While heartily agreeing with this discovery, and sympathizing with the
new aim, I still seriously doubt whether we have seen the kingdom of
heaven in any such full-orbed sense as Jesus intended we should. Too
often we unwittingly preach a kingdom of _earth_ on earth; we leave
something out. That which Jesus preached was somehow more religious.
Surely it is an inadequate kingdom of God when it, as so often happens,
degenerates into a _mere_ scientific cooking-school, or a _mere_
scientific system of sanitation, or a _mere_ several other things
lacking in God motive and God consciousness. The Kingdom of God is more
than a program of social service; it is a God-filled and God-ruled
society. A genuine Kingdom of God on earth will be pervaded by a
heavenly atmosphere. Even a social religion may become so unsocial as to
eliminate the Head of society; it may consign Him to the oblivion of
forgetfulness.
No woman, whose duty it is to be a cook, can be a perfect Christian
while she is careless about the preparation of food for her family. Yet
one may be a scientific cook without being a Christian. It requires more
than beautiful, material conditions to make the kingdom of God on earth.
I know families with beautiful mahogany dining rooms and all that goes
with them, whose good food is so well cooked that it almost melts in
their mouths, and yet they give God no thanks. Indeed, there are those
thus situated who think nothing about God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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