A Far Better Civilization
154:4.6 There
was much talk about Jesus’ preaching doctrines
which were upsetting for the common people;
his enemies maintained that his teachings were impractical, that everything would go to pieces if
everybody made an honest effort to live in accordance with his ideas. And the men of many subsequent generations
have said the same things. Many
intelligent and well-meaning men, even
in the more enlightened age of these revelations, maintain that modern civilization could not
have been built upon the teachings of Jesus —
and they are partially right. But all such
doubters forget that a much better civilization could have been built upon his
teachings, and sometime will be. This world has never seriously tried to carry
out the teachings of Jesus on a large scale,
notwithstanding that halfhearted attempts have often been made to follow the
doctrines of so-called Christianity.
It would seem our modern social apparatus and
institutions have forgotten God’s promise that we will always be cared and
provided for while we are deployed here on our missions of growth and service.
Underlying all the laws, policies, and other components of
our vast social architecture is one faulty and damning element – fear. Despite
all the evidence to the contrary as witnessed within our individual lives and
throughout human history, we still have not evolved from our primal fear of
survival.
We stockpile goods and money for fear of scarcity. We form armies against fear of attack by
foreign powers. We buy guns to protect
our possessions. We build emotional
walls for fear of getting hurt. We hover
over our kids to protect them from imagined dangers. We retreat from service to our fellow man for
fear of being taken advantage of or disrespected.
Jesus taught that all which we prize so dearly and expend
most of our focus upon from a temporal standpoint – our homes, our pensions,
our cars, our possessions, our jobs, our pride, etc. – are all window dressing; mere props on the
stage of life. Jesus
looked upon the factors of temporal existence as inconsequential and meaningless compared to our spiritual
development and growth.
The utopian society Jesus envisioned was one of cooperative
harmony. If mankind could only conquer
the fear of survival and embrace Jesus’ admonition to love each other as he
loved us, thereby completely surrendering ourselves to God’s eternal plan for
our evolution and placing the certainty of our survival in His hands, we might begin
to approach Jesus’ concept of this ideal.
Under this paradigm, we would naturally put the needs of
others before our own. We would feed
each other in times of hunger, care for each other in times of illness or
crisis, provide shelter for those without, and minister to the spiritually
downcast. Eliminate survival fear, and
gone would be our urge to stockpile and accumulate wealth, possessions, and
food. Absent this drive to accumulate
and protect our possessions, and what reason would there be for conflict? If I know you’ve got my back, and you know
I’ve got yours, there’s no longer a need to compete. Absent competition, we approach this ideal of
peaceful coexistence.
I’m not a sociologist, but I suspect an expert might argue
this ideal is unattainable without a free and unlimited supply of food and
energy which all could share in equally.
In the past 100 years, we’ve evolved from horses and buggies to space
travel. Given the ever accelerating pace
at which we are advancing technologically, what might the next 100 years hold
in store for the generations who follow?
Comments
Post a Comment