A student's letter to a friend
© The School of Truth
Source p. 261, Oct / Nov 2007 - The Path of Truth
Dear Friend,
Ever since I received your letter, I have been pondering how to reply to the remark you make about God. You say you "can't see that God would have much use for those who only want to believe and pray when in trouble" and this has been said to me by many people, so I feel it is up to me to reply to it, because it seems to me to be unfair to God as I have experienced Him.
Of course, if one could imagine a person saying to himself, "I'll pray to God now, but if this trouble passes over I have no intention of continuing to attend to Him" then there might be some truth in it. One must also agree that it is a pity to wait till trouble comes before turning one's attention to Him; it makes one feel a bit mean, and people who say (as most of us do at times): "If God gets me out of this I'll promise to attend to Him for the rest of my life," may feel that there is something of bribery in the transaction. But then these theories all leave out of consideration what sort of being GOD is, and what sort of behaviour He expects of us. When you get to know about God, it seems quite natural to turn to Him any time, and if you are in trouble that is as good a time to begin as any other.
Your remark suggests a picture of a rather primitive type of God who is sitting securely away up somewhere saying to Himself, like a petulant and capricious old gentleman "That girl hasn't said her prayers for a good twenty years. I hope she won't come bothering me when she gets scared." If that is your idea of Him, I should not care to pray to that kind of God myself. But then I never could care very much for the kind of God who would attach importance to the meaningless routine many people refer to as saying their prayers.
My idea of God is taken from what I see of His work in the world around me, and in particular from the wonderful people He has created. When anyone paints a picture or writes a book, he puts something of himself into his work, so that one can begin to know him through what he produces; and the more one has in common with him, the more one loves his work. God has put into the world so much of Himself that it only rests with us to develop the right sense of appreciation, to be able to see a great deal about Him in His work; and the more you love and appreciate His work the more you know that you are basically His sort of person.
Of course, our best source of information about God comes from Christ and He told us that God is just like Himself, and that God is just like the very best parents we know of. He told us that God prefers deeds to words, that not those who said "Lord, Lord!" but those who do His will were His loved ones, and He illustrated this by a story of two young men whose father asked them to work on the lands one day. The one said he would, but never went. The other said he wouldn't and then went after all. Which of these, asked Christ, really did the will of his father?
He told us too that at the "last day" He would welcome many people who had never heard of Him. "For I was hungry and you fed me; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you gave me hospitality" and so on. And to those who asked when they had done anything for Him, he would say, "Inasmuch as you did it to one of these my brothers, even to the least of them, you did it to me."
I think judged by these standards you have really served God to the best of your ability, even if you didn't think so yourself. But even if you hadn't, you could still turn to Him like the prodigal son. He really had behaved shockingly, you know, but when his troubles became too great for him to bear, he came limping home; and "when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him" (can't you picture the old man straining his eyes at that figure in the distance, and thinking it couldn't be he and then realising that it was, and gathering up his robes and running as fast as he could to meet him?) and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him." The boy began to apologise, but the father never seemed to hear him, because he was so excited and so busy issuing a stream of orders and setting everyone in a bustle to make a feast and a welcome for him. And Christ told that story expressly to inform us what God was like, and how He would welcome our approach to Him, even if it took a lot of trouble to bring us to Him.
Some people think that prayer is bothering God about something. On the contrary, it doesn't put Him to any trouble; in fact it saves Him trouble, because He longs to help us but needs our co-operation to do so. Let me put it another way. Suppose your mother gave you an umbrella, would you, at any time you owed her a letter, consciously go out in the pouring rain without it? Yet this is how many people are about prayer, and when they get rheumatism and bronchitis they say God can't really love them or He wouldn't let them suffer. Your umbrella will serve you any time, provided you put it up properly and hold it over your head. If you don't use it properly, it's no use blaming the umbrella. Christ told us exactly how the law of prayer works, and since it works whether you use it or not, it may be an encumbrance to you if you use it incorrectly or neglect to use it at all. It is like the law of gravity, which you use when you dish up dinner or drop a letter in the post, and which continues to act exactly as usual when you drop the best china teapot. Christ said, "Whatsoever you desire, when you pray, believe that you have it, and you shall receive it." If you go through life believing that what you fear is coming to you, that has the same force to make these things you fear demonstrate in life as if you go along believing that the things God wants to give you are coming to you. And if you go on praying for the same things over and over again, you show that you don't believe you have them, and so you don't receive them. You must, if you really believe, ask once and then give thanks, and think, speak, act and feel that your prayer is answered, and then you do receive what you want. Not because God has decided to make an exception in your case, not because you have succeeded in persuading Him to favour you, but because you have used the apparatus He has provided: you have operated successfully a Law of Cause and Effect of which it is foolish to be ignorant.
You believe in the law of gravity because you see it work, and presumably you believe that the earth is round, for slightly different reasons. It is more difficult to prove from personal experience of experts and disregard the people who believe it to be flat. Now here is another Law, which has been proved by millions, and can be proved by you personally with a little trouble and care. If I tell you that I personally have proved it, in both its positive and its negative aspects, and that I am satisfied if one does not understand it, it may work to one's detriment, will not that help the belief which you say you cannot believe? After all, when you say you cannot believe, it is important to know what it is your belief should refer to. Most of us feel that it is easier to believe in science than in religion, but when we extend our knowledge of science we find that religion is a part of science after all.
If there is one thing science teaches us, it is that anything worth achieving is worth taking a good deal of trouble over, and that accuracy pays. If, therefore, it takes some time, even a year or two, to get the hang of this Law and make it work properly, surely it is worth the effort. All the time you are working at it you are getting to know God better, and to love Him more, until you can say, like Job, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." That is why people who love God can be radiantly happy under all sorts of apparently difficult conditions, because He enriches and compensates them in unseen ways. People make all sorts of excuses for not taking God into their lives; but usually at the bottom they are afraid to do so, because they think it will mean giving up rather a lot. They may have to give up some pride, and one or two other cumbersome qualities; but I never knew anyone who did not receive far more than he gave up. There are two things you would undoubtedly give up - your fears and your feeling of guilt. Because God, being like parents, makes allowances for our faults, feels that we're doing our best at the stage we have reached, just as a mother feels that her little child is doing his best at his age; and He is looking after us and our loved ones all the time, and always has been doing so, which Christ expressed by saying that not even a sparrow could fall to the ground without His knowledge, and that the very hairs of our head are numbered. Even when we make mistakes, He still manages to turn them to good account if we trust Him to do so. We have only to use our eyes to see that He does not want us or anything in His world to assume a state of static perfection but that progress is the ideal and that even our conception of perfection must progress so that it always stands a long way ahead of us like the carrot before the nose of the donkey. The very fact that we all suffer from feelings of inferiority is evidence of a systematic plan to egg us on. The intention was never that we should feel depressed and guilty, or hang on to our courage with our teeth. On the contrary, Christ said He came that our joy might be full. He was always telling people to be of good cheer; not in the platitudinous way we tell people to cheer up, but as a piece of good advice on how to live. He also said, the night before He was crucified, "My peace I give unto you." Don't you think it is time you accepted that gracious legacy?
The method of Jesus was based on Truth, which is pure science. Science is the discovery of the operation of law; it invades great strongholds of ignorance; it expands the general knowledge of humanity and cannot conflict with religion in its true sense. Jesus was a great scientist living, as He did, in close contact with the source of all knowledge, and His wisdom in using that knowledge made Him also a great philosopher. According to Jung He is, "religion aside, the most perfect example of harmonised psychic activity the world has ever known." Perfection was His formula: perfection through unity with the Father. --Richard Lynch.
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