But when he came to himself he said, “How many of my father's hired hands have bread
enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my
father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer
worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.’”[1]
To focus on the wayward son is natural for us since we
easily identify with his waywardness and seek the security of knowing a return
to wholeness is possible. Our comfort though is quickly focused on the father,
who is the main character in the parable. The only meaningful action of the son
was to return, it is the father’s love and acceptance we desire. We long for the
assurance that weak and sinful as we are, hope lies in the overwhelming love of
the father. In his statement of contrition the son admitted guilt for going
against God and his father. Even though the parable along with others in the
collection was directed toward the Pharisees and Scribes there was no hint of return
to the cultish religion of Israel. Failing his father was to the son tantamount
to failing God. Squandering the monetary wealth of his father was not as bad as
depreciating his love. Living in dire need, having wasted everything he had
received from his father, brought him to his senses. He listened to the echo of
his father’s love coming from his inner soul; he followed that call back to his
father, to the acceptance and love he had lost in waywardness. We realize that
the parable is a verbal picture of the Father, God. The parable depicts the
reconciliation of man with God as a process. Man must recognize his waywardness
and that he is incapable of achieving wholeness. That can only be done by recapturing
a child-like faith and moving toward God. Institutional religion is a sham,
other formal religions are substitutes. Like the wayward son, we have to be
moved by our spirits to seek the Father’s acceptance. Personal religion is the
connection of the spirit of man with the spirit of God.
Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place
where people must worship is in Jerusalem. Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is
coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in
Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for
salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the
true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father
seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him
must worship in spirit and truth.”[2]
Institutional religion glosses over the words of Jesus
recorded by John. By so doing, men and women are led into ritualistic forms of
expression. It is hoped that believers come to their senses and give up the
emptiness of legalism to follow the call of God’s love. In John’s gospel, Jesus
told the woman that true worship was not limited geographically or
ritualistically. Solomon in his prayer of dedication of the temple stated the
obvious, “… will God indeed
reside with mortals on earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain
you, how much less this house that I have built!”[3] From the writing of Paul we learn that
Jeremiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in that our bodies are the temple of God’s Spirit[4]. The
Samaritan woman was worried about places and things, but Jesus told her
concerns were misplaced. Ritualistic, parochial religions are replaced by
spirit religion.
I found the following excerpt interesting:
To suggest personal will and effort to
one all sicklied o'er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest
the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very
powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures
him, all decaying and failing as he is. Well, we are all such helpless failures
in the last resort. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and
prison inmates, and death finally runs the robustest of us down. And whenever
we feel this, such a sense of the vanity and provisionality of our voluntary
career comes over us that all our morality appears but as a plaster hiding a
sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for
that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but, alas! are not.
And here religion comes to our rescue
and takes our fate into her hands. There is a state of mind, known to religious
men, but to no others, in which the will to assert ourselves and hold our own
has been displaced by a willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing in
the floods and waterspouts of God. In this state of mind, what we most dreaded
has become the habitation of our safety, and the hour of our moral death has
turned into our spiritual birthday. The time for tension in our soul is over,
and that of happy relaxation, of calm deep breathing, of an eternal present,
with no discordant future to be anxious about, has arrived. Fear is not held in
abeyance as it is by mere morality, it is positively expunged and washed away.
We shall see abundant examples of this
happy state of mind in later lectures of this course. We shall see how
infinitely passionate a thing religion at its highest flights can be. Like
love, like wrath, like hope, ambition, jealousy, like every other instinctive
eagerness and impulse, it adds to life an enchantment which is not rationally
or logically deducible from anything else. This enchantment, coming as a gift
when it does come, - a gift of our organism, the physiologists will tell us, a
gift of God's grace, the theologians say, - is either there or not there for
us, and there are persons who can no more become possessed by it than they can
fall in love with a given woman by mere word of command. Religious feeling is
thus an absolute addition to the Subject's range of life. It gives him a new
sphere of power. When the outward battle is lost, and the outer world disowns
him, it redeems and vivifies an interior world which otherwise would be an
empty waste.
If religion is to mean anything
definite for us, it seems to me that we ought to take it as meaning this added
dimension of emotion, this enthusiastic temper of espousal, in regions where
morality strictly so called can at best but bow its head and acquiesce. It
ought to mean nothing short of this new reach of freedom for us, with the
struggle over, the keynote of the universe sounding in our ears, and
everlasting possession spread before our eyes. (Once more, there are plenty of
men, constitutionally somber men, in whose religious life this rapturousness is
lacking.[5]
I will not offer an interpretation of William James’
lecture, but instead look to certain teachings of scripture which appear to be
along similar lines of thought.
Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we
drink?' or 'What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these
things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these
things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for
tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.[6]
Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you
are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make
you free.”[7]
For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse; for it is
written, “Cursed is
everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of
the law. Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law; for “The one who is righteous will live
by faith.’”[8]
Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what
you have; for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” So we can say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not
be afraid. What can anyone do to me?”[9]
Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the
heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do
not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we
have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let
us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive
mercy and find grace to help in time of need.[10]
In the conversation with Pilate, Jesus clarified his purpose
in coming to earth:
Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked
him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus answered, "Do you ask
this on your own, or did others tell you about me?" Pilate replied,
"I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed
you over to me. What have you done?" Jesus answered, "My kingdom is
not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be
fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my
kingdom is not from here." Pilate asked him, "So you are a
king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this I was
born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.[11]
The kingdom of God, and the kingship of Jesus was the
priority of his coming to earth. All that was promised through the prophets,
all that was foreseen by the prophets found fulfillment in Jesus.
And all the prophets, as many as have spoken, from Samuel and those
after him, also predicted these days. You are the descendants of the prophets
and of the covenant that God gave to your ancestors, saying to Abraham, 'And in
your descendants all the families of the earth shall be blessed.'[12]
Spirit religion is the spiritual connection with God through
Christ, it is not a religion of ritual and tradition. The institutional Church
is the outcome of human pride. The observation of rituals and laws founded in
superstition not in spirituality. Spirit religion is having our head in heaven
and our feet on the ground. God promised through Jeremiah, “I will put my law within them, and I will
write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”[13] The lectures by William
James focus on personal religion, surely religion cannot be more personal than
having God’s law within us, written on our hearts. James lectures are a study
in human nature. Spirit religion is taking on the nature of God.
[1]
Luke 15:17-19
[2]
Joh 4:20-24
[3]
2Ch 6:18
[4]
1Cor 3:16
[5]
The Varieties of Religious Experience, A Study in Human Nature, by William
James p. 31
[6]
Mat 6:31
[7]
Joh 8:31, 32
[8]
Gal 3:10, 11
[9]
Heb 13:5, 6
[10]
Heb 4:14-16
[11]
Joh 18:33-37
[12]
Act 3:24, 25
[13]
Jer 31:33
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