(Since last month's newsletter, a copy of the
pamphlet Unity’s Statement of Faith has been found in the school archives
dated 1982. So it was printed longer than I first thought.)
After the first statement
about our belief in God, we continue with a paragraph which affirms our belief in the
Christ.
2. We believe in Christ, the Son of God, in whom is imaged the ideal
creation, with perfect man on the throne of dominion.
Often I am asked, "Do
you believe in Christ?" The question really asked is, "Do you believe in
Jesus?" Many people blend these two words into one concept: Jesus Christ, the
son of God. Christ is not a name; it is a title. We have borrowed the word in English from
the Greek, christos. It is the Greek translation of the Aramaic word, mesheeha (in
Hebrew: mesheeach) which means "messiah, anointed one, or consecrated
one." The root of the word means "oil, butter, salve or to anoint." To the
Easterner, oil is a symbol of God’s light and therefore understanding. To be anointed
is to bear the light of God. In the Old Testament we find that kings, priests and prophets
were anointed or "Christed," a symbol that they were consecrated to God’s
service.
In the first chapter of
Matthew we are given Jesus’ genealogy beginning with the father of the Hebrew people,
Abraham. It ends in verse 16 with, "...and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of
Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ." Christ was not born; Jesus was
born and he was called messiah, anointed or consecrated one. Christ, the Son of God, is
the image-likeness of Genesis 1:26, God’s idea of itself, perfect spiritual man.
Christ is God individualized within everyone. Jesus said, "You, therefore, must be
perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matt 5:48) He could not have told us
to be perfect if we didn’t have perfection within us. We would not look at a five
year old child and say, "this is the ideal adult human being." A child is in the
process of learning and finding out who and what he really is. So it is with us; we have
this spiritual pattern of perfection within us and are learning to recognize and express
it.
Since I mentioned
Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, I need to point out the one found in Luke 3:23-38.
Where Matthew began with Abraham and worked forward, Luke begins with Joseph and works
backward to Adam. "...the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of
God." (V. 38) Each name is called the son of the one who precedes him. In this case
Adam is called "Son of God" and since we have been taught that all mankind can
trace its roots to Adam, we are "Sons of God" also.
The "throne of
dominion" is the divine power and authority of the Christ. John said, "...all
things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made."
(John 1:3) The I AM or Christ within everyone has the power to form and shape substance
and conditions. Whenever we say, "I AM," we call upon the power and dominion of
the Christ to shape our lives.
3. We believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God made manifest in Jesus
of Nazareth, who overcame death, and who is now with us in His perfect body as the
Way-shower in regeneration for all men.
First was God, then the
Christ and now Jesus. In his own time Jesus was never called Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus.
It wasn’t until many years after the resurrection that he was referred to as Jesus
Christ. He had always been known as Jesus of Nazareth.
In this statement we affirm
our belief in the great role Jesus has played in the spiritual evolution of mankind.
Jesus, the son of man, recognized the spiritual perfection and divine Self (the Son of
God) within himself and everyone to such a degree that his spiritual nature (the Christ)
overshadowed his humanness (Jesus). From this consciousness of the spiritual nature of
man, he performed what appear to be miracles to human eyes in other’s lives and in
his own. He became our way-shower by blazing this path and saying, "Follow me,"
(Lk 9:23) because he know we could.
In an address at the opening
of the Unity Conference in 1923 Charles Fillmore said, "‘But,’ you say,
‘Jesus Christ is gone.’ I assure you that he has not gone. He is in our midst
today. He has been seen again and again standing on this platform, and we absolutely know
that he is in the fourth dimension, that he has a body. He has the same body that you
would have if you would reconstruct your body as he reconstructed his." By following
what Jesus taught and demonstrated we can so raise our spiritual awareness that we
transcend any limitations perceived from our previous human viewpoint.
4. We believe in the Holy Spirit, which baptizes the universe and
man with the thoughts of God, and perpetually establishes the divine law in all
manifestation.
Unity is Trinitarian; we
accept the concept of the Trinity or Tri-unity of God. In traditional churches the trinity
is understood as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Charles Fillmore expressed the concept from
a metaphysical perspective. Father represents Mind, the source of all. The product of Mind
is ideas. The Son represents the product or offspring of mind–its ideas. To
accomplish anything an idea must be carried out and made visible. This is the activity of
the Holy Spirit. The Father is the architect, the Son is the blueprint and the Holy Spirit
is the builder. In human experience, procreation requires both male and female. The same
is true of creation. The Father is the masculine aspect while the Holy Spirit is the
feminine. Charles Fillmore said, "This quickening of the soul by the Holy Spirit has
continued ever since and in every age. Thousands have testified to her ministry. But
giving God and Christ all the credit without thought of her, the Holy Spirit." He
also said, "So Jesus Christ pointed her out as the only teacher of the doctrine he
gave to the human family. She is the transformer of the physical to the spiritual in the
natural world. This was typified by the presence and instruction of Jesus’ mother to
the servants at the changing of the water into wine at the marriage feast in Cana."
(Unity, Sept. 1942)
Sometimes people think of
God as king, Mary as the queen of heaven and Jesus the son. This is the same symbolism as
the Trinity. The feminine aspect of God is the creative, nurturing, inspiring activity.
This activity is always at work in the universe as the activity of law. It is always
inspiring whether we are receptive to that inspiration or not.
To be continued next month.