Free Faith
Response to comment 08sep20 222C23
http://michelpotayblog.net/222.html/222librecontestation-comments-french.html
Translated by djd
There is a certain number of methods, formulas, procedures, etc., to exercise one’s faith, piety, spirituality, a little bit like learning a foreign language (never very well). These modalities or proposed exercises are Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Sunnite Muslim, Shiite Muslim, Sufi, etc. The method proposed by [person named in the comment] is certainly good, but it is a method that follows the path of religion. Let me explain: All that is religious, no matter what religion, reflects the fundamental error of religion, to think and let one think that one cannot find a tie with the Most High and Good except through procedures, rules, ways of doing which are well-determined. The proposed procedure, no matter which one, has the grave fault of maintaining the idea that spiritual happiness is obtained after exercises or procedures. This is false. The birth of the soul, salvation, results on the contrary from an absolute liberation in only one direction, that of love. Yet no two persons exist who love in the same way, who pray in the same way. Nothing is more closely linked than freedom with love (RA 7/5, 25/7) and true piety (35/6).
Some Arès Pilgrim brothers and sisters have at times thought about proposing to the public such procedures for penitence, prayer, etc., but upon reflecting together, they and I have understood that the danger of such public propositions is to deprive the human being of the first exercise to which they should bend, that of absolute freedom of faith (RA 10/10). There is not one or several methods to love one’s neighbor, there are as many as there are human beings, because no two people exist who love in the same way, who forgive in the same way, who make peace in the same way; each one acquires his own spiritual intelligence, each one frees himself from his prejudices in his own way because no two people exist who have exactly the same prejudices. One rule in common: Love all mankind without exception, forgive all offenses without exception, make peace in all circumstances, have spiritual intelligence as strong as intellectual intelligence, free oneself from all prejudice without exception. This being so, each one proceeds according to his own nature, his own possibilities. He must have the will (RA 12/4) to be the penitent that the Father has asked each human being to be. We are liberators, not educators. The way or path of salvation—one’s personal salvation (RA 31/6) contributing to the world’s salvation (28/7) —is that of each one, it is not a unique path imposed nor a model path: paths is plural in The Revelation of Arès ! Gottfried Benn, a brilliant expressionistic German, powerful thought, wrote: “I searched without ever finding from where could come love and goodness.” He was right; there is nothing which codifies or systematizes love, piety, virtue. No prophet ever left a method for that. Each human being is the supreme image and likeness (Genesis 1/26) of the Father or Life and is meant to become a God… a God (RA 2/13), not just God.