The disciples spoke just as we do. It would be well if, while continuing to lead our individual, willful lives, we could be made to believe that by fulfilling God’s commandments we should be all the happier. We all ask for what is contrary to the whole spirit of Christ’s doctrine, and we are surprised that we can by no means believe. And Christ answers the misunderstanding, which existed then, and still exists, by a parable in which He shows what true faith is. Faith cannot proceed from trust in what He says14; faith comes only from a consciousness of our state.
Faith is based only on the rational consciousness of what is best for us. He shows that it is impossible to rouse faith in men by promises of rewards and by threats of punishments; that it will be but a very weak trust that will be destroyed at the first temptation; that the faith that moves mountains, the faith that nothing can shake, is based on the consciousness of our inevitable peril, and of the sole salvation possible for us.
Faith needs no promises of reward. It is only necessary to understand that salvation from inevitable destruction lies in a general life for all humanity according to the will of the Master. He who has once understood this will seek no confirmation of his faith, but will be saved without his requiring any exhortation.
When the disciples beg Him to confirm their faith, Christ says, ‘When the master comes home with his laborer from the field, he does not tell him to sit down and eat immediately, but first orders him to pen the cattle and to serve him; and, this done, the laborer sits down to his food and eats. The laborer obeys, and does not think himself ill used, neither does he pride himself on his work, nor require thanks or a reward for it.
He knows that it must be so, and that he has only done his duty; that is all that is required of him by his service, but just this is, at the same time, for his own good. In like manner, when you have done all you are bound to do, think that you have only done what was given to you to do.’ He who understands his duty toward his Master will see that it is only by submitting to his Master’s will that he can have life, and can know wherein lies the blessing of his life. And he will have faith – the faith that Christ teaches us. Faith, according to the doctrine of Christ, is based on a rational consciousness of the purpose of life.
14 Faith cannot proceed from trust in promises he might make.
The foundation of faith, according to the doctrine of Christ, is light.
John 1:9-12: ‘That was the true light, which lights every man who comes into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. And as many as received Him and believed in His name, to them He gave power to become the sons of God.’ John 3:19-21: ‘And this is the judgment15, that light has come into the world; and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
For everyone who does evil hates the light, neither does he come to the light, lest his deeds should be seen and disapproved, because they are evil. But he who does truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, because they are done through God.’
He who has understood the doctrine of Christ can require no strengthening of his faith. Faith, according to Christ, is based on the light, on the truth. Not once does Christ call upon men to have faith in Him; He calls upon them to have faith in the truth.
John 8:40,46: He says to the Jews, ‘You seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth, which I have heard from God. Which of you convicts Me of untruth? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me?’ John 18:37: Christ says, ‘To this end I was born, and for this cause I came into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.’
John 14:6: He says, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’
Further on, in the same chapter, Christ says to His disciples, ‘The Father shall give you another Comforter, and He may abide with you forever. He is the spirit of truth, who the world does not see and does not know; but you know him, for he dwells in you and shall be in you.’
He says that His whole doctrine is truth, that He Himself is truth.
The doctrine of Christ is the doctrine of truth, and, therefore, faith in Christ is not a trust in anything that refers to Jesus, but a knowledge of the truth. It is impossible to persuade or bribe a man to fulfill it. He who understands the doctrine of Christ will have faith in Him, because His doctrine is truth. He who knows the truth cannot refuse to believe in it. Therefore, if a man feels himself to be sinking, he cannot refuse to take hold of the rope of salvation, and the question, ‘What shall we do to believe?’ is one that shows a total misunderstanding of Christ’s doctrine.
15 Χρισιςsignifies judgment and not condemnation, as it is sometimes translated.
Chapter 10
We say that it is hard to live in accordance with Christ’s precepts! How can it be otherwise than hard while we conceal our state from ourselves and earnestly try to maintain the trust that our state is not what it really is? Calling that trust ‘faith’ we exalt it into something sacred, and either by violence, by working upon the feelings, by threats, by flattery, or by deceit we seek to allure others to that false trust. A Christian once said, ‘Credo quia absurdum,’ and other Christians now enthusiastically repeat the words, thinking a belief in absurdities is the best way to the truth.
A clever and learned man observed to me, a short time ago, in the course of conversation, that the Christian doctrine was of no importance as a doctrine or morality. ‘We find the same,’ he said, ‘in the teachings of the Stoics, the Brahmins, and in the Talmud. The substance of the Christian doctrine is in the theosophical teaching contained in the dogmas.’ That means that what is eternal and general to all humanity, what is necessary for life, and what is rational, is not of most value. But what is quite incomprehensible, and therefore unnecessary, but in the name of which millions have been put to death, is the most important point of Christianity!
We have formed an erroneous idea of life, both as concerns ourselves personally and the world in general. We have based it on our own wickedness and on our personal lusts; and we look upon that erroneous idea – united only by outward observances to the doctrine of Christ – as most important and necessary to life. Were it not for that trust in what is but falsehood, which has been upheld by men for ages, the falsity of our view of life, as well as the truth of Christ’s doctrine, would have become manifest long ago.
Awful as it may seem to say so, I sometimes think that if the doctrine of Christ, with the Church teaching that has become a part of it, had never existed, those who now call themselves Christians would be nearer than they are now to the doctrine of Christ; i.e., to a rational idea of the true happiness of life. The morality taught by all the prophets would not then have been a closed book for mankind. Men would have had their petty preachers of the truth, and they would have believed them. But now that the whole truth has been revealed, it seems so awful to those whose deeds are evil that they have interpreted it falsely, and men have lost their trust in the truth.
In our European world the saying of Christ, that ‘He came into the world in order to bear witness of the truth, and that he who is of the truth hears Him,’ has long since been answered in the words of Pilate, ‘What is the truth?’ We have taken in earnest these words of Pilate’s, expressive of such sad and deep irony, and we have made them our faith. In our world not only do all live without knowing the truth, and without a desire to know it, but also with the firm conviction that of all idle occupations the idlest is the search after truth. The doctrine of life that all nations, long before the existence of European society, considered as most important, that doctrine which, as Christ told us, is the only thing necessary, is alone excluded from our lives. This is done by the institution called the Church; and yet even those who themselves belong to that institution have long ceased to believe in it.
The only aperture that lets in the light, toward which the eyes of all who
