Page:What Is The True Christian Religion?.pdf/61



The true Christian religion is made up of Three Things,—God, Ourselves and Others, In the past it has been made up chiefly of Two Things, God and Ourselves, Leaving out "Others" it has lost its true objective—left out the Divine objective, the Divine nature and purpose.

God created the universe out of love, out of selfless love. Because of the nature of His love, being incapable of self-centered love, He had to have others outside of Himself to love. Therefore it was that He created the universe to be a theater of action in which He might express His love. In this way it is that man was created as God's beloved, to be the objective of the Divine love, upon whom God might bestow His love in boundless measure.

With this idea in mind it is quickly seen how completely different are the viewpoints of God and man, based upon what God is and what man through his fallen nature has become. Man has become as to his human inheritance thoroughly self-centered in all that he feels, thinks and does, whereas God is infinitely and forever boundless love for others, with a nature so different from man's that man cannot easily comprehend it.

In attempting to bring man back to a realization of his true nature, at first undeveloped, which is without form and order, it became necessary for God to be infinitely patient. This is pictured in the first chapter of Genesis. That chapter is dedicated to a description of the six steps necessary to bring man into a state of self-realization. There we read: "And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep". The whole chapter might be called the story of Man's Awakening to the consciousness and life of himself as primarily a child of God.

Men in their so-called "natural" state are very much like the Prodigal Son when he first went into the riotous life of the "far country". They have no true idea at all of the true values of life. Therefore the need of the Divine to adapt Himself to the understanding of fallen men. This is why the Bible is written in its natural sense to men as they are and why they misunderstand God. Their