God’s Self-Expression And The Mind Of To-Day 3

Naturally enough! It is impossible for any human being to delight in a God whose first impulse in “doing us good” is so often to ravage our prosperity and affections. So long as we believe in Him, fear will rule our lives. It is because the Caucasian believes in Him, that he lives in fear and dies in fear. To attempt to eliminate fear and retain this concept of God is in vain.

Understanding this, the average Caucasian has made little or no effort to eliminate fear. He would rather live and die in fear than change this concept of God. It is dear to him. He finds it useful. To its shoulders, he can shift the ills of which he is unwilling himself to accept the responsibility. Where God is a puzzle, life is a puzzle; and where life is a puzzle, the Caucasian gets his chance for making the materialistic ideal the only one that seems practical. In a world which was to any noticeable degree freed from the spectre of fear, most of our existing systems of government, religion, business, law, and national as well as international politics, would have to be remodeled. There would be little or no use for them. Built on fear and run by fear, fear is as essential to their existence as coal to our industries. A society that had escaped from fear would escape from their control.

In this present spring of 1921, we are having an exhibition of fear on a scale so colossal that the heart of man is dazed by it. There is not a government which is not afraid of some other government. There is not a government which is not afraid of its own people. There is not a people, who are not afraid of their own government. There is not a country, in which one group is not afraid of some other group. All is rivalry, enmity, suspicion, confusion, and distrust, “while men’s hearts are fainting for fear, and for the anxious expectation of what is coming on the world.” All statesmen, all ministers, all ambassadors, all politicians, all bankers, all businessmen, all professional men, all journalists, all farmers, all laborers, all workers in the arts, all men and women of all kinds—with the exception of one here and there who have reached the understanding of the love which casteth out fear—live and work in fear, and in mistrust of their colleagues. From the supreme councils of the Allies, down to the crooks and conspirators in dives and joints, everyone is afraid of being double-crossed. There is so much double-crossing everywhere, that we have been obliged to invent this name for the operation. England is afraid of being double-crossed by Germany, France by England, Italy by France, the United States by Europe, and Japan by the United States, while within these general limitations, minor double-crossing interests seethe like bacteria in a drop of poisoned blood. The nations are infected with fear because they elect to believe in a God of fear, and the Caucasians more than others because they have chosen to see a God of fear in Him, who was put before them as a God of Love.

TO BE CONTINUED….

PHOTO CREDIT : JOSEPH CHAN