The New Gospel

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">But what am I loving when I love you? … a light, voice, fragrance, food and embrace for my inmost self, where something limited to no place shines into my mind, where something not snatched away by passing time sings to me … where there is savor undiminished by famished eating, and where I am clasped in a union from which no satiety can tear me away.&nbsp; This is what I love, when I love my God. &nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">What are you, then, my God? … ever active, ever at rest … seeking though you lack nothing … you are jealous yet secure, you regret without sadness, you grow angry yet remain tranquil … you take back what you find although you never lost it … you are never in need yet you rejoice in your gains … you made him [man], though the sin that is in him is not of your making … you are the disposer and creator of everything in nature, but of our sins the disposer only …&nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">But to whom am I telling this story?&nbsp; Not to you, my God; rather in your presence I am relating these events to my own kin, the human race … And why?&nbsp; So that whosoever reads them may reflect with me on the depths from which we must cry to you.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">The idea of a personal God is foreign to me.&nbsp; But we ought to remember that religion uses language in quite a different way from science.&nbsp; The language of religion is more closely related to the language of poetry than to the language of science.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">It is a different question whether belief in a personal God should be contested … I myself would never engage in such a task.&nbsp; For such a belief seems to me preferable to the lack of any transcendental outlook of life, and I wonder whether one can ever successfully render to the majority of mankind a more sublime means in order to satisfy its metaphysical needs.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.&nbsp; But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal.&nbsp; For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated.&nbsp; I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.&nbsp; If something is in me which can be called religious, then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">As a Christian, I claim I know Jesus’ tone of voice, His body language, His character.&nbsp; I claim I know what He means because I know Him, I know Him intimately … This is the equivalent of how a husband and wife might be able to read each other’s words [the words of Jesus in the Bible], how their love meant what was written … You see, Jesus is a Living Being … He is alive and can be known. &nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Jesus loves me!&nbsp; this I know,</em></p><p><em>For the Bible tells me so;</em></p><p><em>Little ones to him belong,</em></p><p><em>They are weak but he is strong.</em></p><p><em>Jesus loves me!&nbsp; He who died,</em></p><p><em>Heaven’s gate to open wide;</em></p><p><em>He will wash away my sin,</em></p><p><em>Let his little child come in.</em></p>