Paper 101 Overview: The Real Nature of Religion

Religion ranges from the primitive fears of early humans to the magnificent faith of civilized mortals who know they are children of the eternal God. Religion is not just about morals and ethics, though it does influence them; rather, it is the inspiration behind human evolution. Religion is about faith, trust, and assurance that can overcome the logic of despair and material thinking.

In true religion, faith and reason work together to create a logical spiritual experience. The inner voice of true religion goes beyond emotion, becoming a spiritual assurance that is greater than human reason. This real religion is not based on proof or feelings, but on personal experience with God and spiritual communion.

Religion is a human experience that starts with the fear of primitive savages and grows to become the faith of civilized people who know they are sons of God. Religion influences ethics and morals in society, but it is more than just a moral movement. The conviction-faith of religion can overcome the logic of despair that comes from material thinking, providing a genuine inner voice that guides humans toward God.

Religion is faith, trust, and assurance that goes beyond what reason and philosophy can provide. The feeling of religious assurance is more than emotion; it surpasses the mind's reason and the logic of philosophy. True religion does not ignore reason, but from the inside of experience, it is completely reasonable.

True religion is not a belief system that can be proven with evidence, nor is it a mystical experience of special feelings. Religion is not created by human reason, but when viewed from within, it is completely reasonable. Religion comes from experiencing divine reality in the consciousness of a moral being who is evolving; it represents real experience with eternal truths while still living in a physical body.

The Thought Adjuster (the spirit of God within humans) does not communicate through emotions but through higher spiritual thinking. Religion lives through faith and insight, not through sight and feeling. It is not about finding new facts or having unique experiences, but about finding new spiritual meanings in facts already known, and experiencing spiritual communion with the divine influences in the human mind.

The fact of religion exists in the religious experience of average human beings. Proof that revelation is real comes from human experience: revelation brings together science and religion into a consistent universe philosophy. Revelation provides a way to understand the relationship between matter and spirit through the mediation of mind.

Science, religion, philosophy, and revelation all have their own methods and strengths. Science leads to a First Cause through studying nature, but it takes religious faith to turn this First Cause into a God of salvation. There are two basic reasons to believe in a God who helps humans survive: personal experience (the hope initiated by the Thought Adjuster) and the revelation of truth (through divine messengers or written texts).

Religion is so vital that it continues even without education and despite wrong ideas. Throughout history, religion has provided what humans need for progress and survival: ethical conscience and moral awareness. Faith insight is a gift of the cosmic mind working with the Thought Adjuster, which is God's gift to humans.

True spiritual faith can be recognized by how it affects human behavior, such as: helping ethics progress despite animal tendencies, creating trust in God's goodness even in disappointment, giving courage despite natural disasters, providing peace during sickness and suffering, maintaining composure during injustice, keeping faith in victory despite seemingly unfair fate, believing in God despite logical arguments against God, keeping faith in the soul's survival despite false teachings, continuing despite complex civilizations, contributing to altruism despite human selfishness, believing in universe unity despite evil, and continuing to worship God no matter what happens.

Because your world is generally ignorant of origins, it has been necessary at times to provide information about cosmology. This has always caused problems for the future. The laws of revelation restrict the sharing of unearned or premature knowledge because any cosmology presented as part of revealed religion will soon be outdated.

Those who participate in revelation are limited by instructions from their superiors. We cannot predict scientific discoveries that will happen in the next thousand years. While the religious truths in these presentations will stand the test of time, many of our statements about physical sciences will need revision as science advances. Truth is always a revelation: either self-revelation through the Thought Adjuster or epochal revelation through celestial agencies or personalities.

Revelation is a technique that saves ages of time in sorting the errors of evolution from spiritual truth. Science deals with facts, religion concerns values, and philosophy tries to unite the meanings of both. Through enlightened philosophy, the mind tries to connect the meanings of facts and values to understand complete reality.

There are two types of religion: evolutionary religion (from the mind) and revealed religion (from the spirit). Science, religion, and philosophy all start with certain assumptions. Scientists collect facts, philosophers organize ideas, and prophets elevate ideals. Evolutionary religion comes from the mind and focuses on ethics and duty, while revealed religion comes from the Paradise Trinity and emphasizes love and the golden rule.

The morontia (soul) phase of revealed religion involves survival and seeking spirit perfection. Throughout all religious experience, from its beginning in material life to full spirit status, the Thought Adjuster is key to realizing the Supreme Being's reality. The Adjuster also holds the secrets of your faith in reaching the Ultimate.

Moral will includes decisions based on reasoned knowledge, wisdom, and religious faith. These choices show moral personality, which leads to morontia personality and eventually spirit status. Jesus taught that his faith points to complete human salvation and the ultimate achievement in the universe because it provides: freedom from material limitations through realizing sonship with God, freedom from intellectual bondage through truth, freedom from spiritual blindness through brotherhood, salvation from incompleteness through reaching spirit levels, salvation from self through going beyond self-consciousness, salvation from time through eternal life, and salvation from the finite through oneness with Deity.

An idea is a theoretical plan for action, while a positive decision is a validated plan of action. A stereotype is an accepted plan without validation. The materials for building a personal philosophy of religion come from both inner and outer experiences. Social status, economics, education, morals, politics, race, and current religious teachings all affect one's personal philosophy of religion.

The big difference between religious and nonreligious philosophy is in what values are recognized and where loyalties lie. There are four phases in religious philosophy evolution: conforming to tradition and authority, settling for stability in daily living, reaching intellectual levels but becoming culturally trapped, or achieving freedom from all conventional limitations to think, act, and live honestly and fearlessly. A sound religious philosophy distinguishes between material and spiritual realities while recognizing their unification in intellectual striving and social service.

Belief becomes faith when it shapes your way of living. Faith is a living quality of genuine religious experience. One believes truth, admires beauty, and respects goodness, but only worships God. Belief limits and binds, while faith expands and releases. Faith falsifies its trust when it denies realities and claims special knowledge, or when it betrays intellectual integrity and reduces loyalty to supreme values and ideals.

Faith does not avoid solving life's problems. Living faith does not promote bigotry, persecution, or intolerance. Faith does not restrict creative imagination or maintain unreasonable prejudice against scientific discoveries. Faith energizes religion and helps the religious person heroically live by the golden rule, with a zeal that matches their knowledge and leads to sublime peace.

No claimed revelation of religion could be considered genuine if it failed to recognize the ethical obligations created by previous evolutionary religion. Revelation always expands the ethical horizon of evolved religion while also expanding the moral obligations of all earlier revelations. When judging primitive religion, remember to evaluate savages according to their level of enlightenment and conscience.

True religion is the sublime and profound conviction within the soul that it would be wrong not to believe in the highest ethical and moral concepts, the highest interpretation of life's greatest values and the universe's deepest realities. The search for beauty is part of religion only when it is ethical and enriches moral concepts. Art is religious only when filled with purpose derived from spiritual motivation. The enlightened spiritual consciousness of civilized humans is concerned with finding the truth of living and the right way to react to the situations of mortal existence.

Intelligent humans know they are children of nature and part of the material universe, but cannot find evidence of individual survival by examining physical causes and effects. Humans are also part of the world of ideas, but concepts alone do not indicate the survival of the person who conceives them. Logic and reason cannot reveal the eternal truth of personality survival.

It is only through the spiritual path leading to spiritual insight that humans can break free from the limitations of their mortal status. Energy and mind lead back to Paradise and Deity, but only in the spiritual sense is man a child of God. Humankind can never discover divinity except through religious experience and true faith. The purpose of religion is not to satisfy curiosity about God but to provide intellectual stability and philosophical security, enriching human life by connecting the mortal with the divine, the partial with the perfect, man and God.