THE EUROPEAN DARK AGES

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From THE URANTIA BOOK

Part IV, 195, 4

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The church, being an adjunct to society and the ally of politics, was doomed to share in the intellectual and spiritual decline of the so-called European “dark ages.” During this time, religion became more and more monasticized, asceticized, and legalized. In a spiritual sense, Christianity was hibernating. Throughout this period there existed, alongside this slumbering and secularized religion, a continuous stream of mysticism, a fantastic spiritual experience bordering on unreality and philosophically akin to pantheism.

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 During these dark and despairing centuries, religion became virtually secondhanded again. The individual was almost lost before the overshadowing authority, tradition, and dictation of the church. A new spiritual menace arose in the creation of a galaxy of “saints” who were assumed to have special influence at the divine courts, and who, therefore, if effectively appealed to, would be able to intercede in man’s behalf before the Gods.

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 But Christianity was sufficiently socialized and paganized that, while it was impotent to stay the oncoming dark ages, it was the better prepared to survive this long period of moral darkness and spiritual stagnation. And it did persist on through the long night of Western civilization and was still functioning as a moral influence in the world when the renaissance dawned.

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The rehabilitation of Christianity, following the passing of the dark ages, resulted in bringing into existence numerous sects of the Christian teachings, beliefs suited to special intellectual, emotional, and spiritual types of human personality. And many of these special Christian groups, or religious families, still persist at the time of the making of this presentation.

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 Christianity exhibits a history of having originated out of the unintended transformation of the religion of Jesus into a religion about Jesus. It further presents the history of having experienced Hellenization, paganization, secularization, institutionalization, intellectual deterioration, spiritual decadence, moral hibernation, threatened extinction, later rejuvenation, fragmentation, and more recent relative rehabilitation. Such a pedigree is indicative of inherent vitality and the possession of vast recuperative resources. And this same Christianity is now present in the civilized world of Occidental peoples and stands face to face with a struggle for existence which is even more ominous than those eventful crises which have characterized its past battles for dominance.

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 Religion is now confronted by the challenge of a new age of scientific minds and materialistic tendencies. In this gigantic struggle between the secular and the spiritual, the religion of Jesus will eventually triumph.

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Yeah can you hear the call

 in our rambling land sufferations,

That can expand beyond all hope of light

 and plunge us into unrelenting night
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A pall on truth and reason,

It feels like hunting season

So avoid those lines of sight and we'll set this right
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Welcome to the new dark ages

I hope you're living right

These are the new dark ages

And the world might end tonight
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Now come ye children one and all - let's heed Ezekiel's call,

And bide until the word is good and ripe and get plucked clean out of sight
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The world will be erased our kin will be

Immaculate ejaculate in space

Before the kind of king's love, he'll snatch us

From above, brothers help me sing it
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Welcome to the new dark ages

I hope you're living right

These are the new dark ages

And the world might end tonight
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So how do you sleep

There's nothing to keep

This is deep

Because we're animals - with golden rules

Who... who can't be moved by rational views
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Welcome to the new dark ages

I hope you're living right

Welcome to the new dark ages

And the world might end tonight

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RELIGION IS HARD WORK

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Evolutionary man does not naturally relish hard work. To keep pace in his life experience with the impelling demands and the compelling urges of a growing religious experience means incessant activity in spiritual growth, intellectual expansion, factual enlargement, and social service. There is no real religion apart from a highly active personality. Therefore do the more indolent of men often seek to escape the rigors of truly religious activities by a species of ingenious self-deception through resorting to a retreat to the false shelter of stereotyped religious doctrines and dogmas. But true religion is alive. Intellectual crystallization of religious concepts is the equivalent of spiritual death. You cannot conceive of religion without ideas, but when religion once becomes reduced only to an idea, it is no longer religion; it has become merely a species of human philosophy.

Again, there are other types of unstable and poorly disciplined souls who would use the sentimental ideas of religion as an avenue of escape from the irritating demands of living. When certain vacillating and timid mortals attempt to escape from the incessant pressure of evolutionary life, religion, as they conceive it, seems to present the nearest refuge, the best avenue of escape. But it is the mission of religion to prepare man for bravely, even heroically, facing the vicissitudes of life. Religion is evolutionary man’s supreme endowment, the one thing which enables him to carry on and “endure as seeing Him who is invisible.” Mysticism, however, is often something of a retreat from life which is embraced by those humans who do not relish the more robust activities of living a religious life in the open arenas of human society and commerce. True religion must act. Conduct will be the result of religion when man actually has it, or rather when religion is permitted truly to possess the man. Never will religion be content with mere thinking or unacting feeling.

We are not blind to the fact that religion often acts unwisely, even irreligiously, but it acts. Aberrations of religious conviction have led to bloody persecutions, but always and ever religion does something; it is dynamic!

From THE URANTIA BOOK, Part III, 102, 2

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THOUGHTS ON PRAYER - 4

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Mysticism, as the technique of the

consciousness of the presence of God,

is altogether praiseworthy, but when such

practices lead to social isolation and culminate

in religious fanaticism, they are all but reprehensible.

Altogether too frequently that which the overwrought

mystic evaluates as divine inspiration is the uprisings

of his own deep mind. The contact of the mortal mind

with its indwelling Adjuster, while often favored by

devoted meditation, is more frequently facilitated

by wholehearted and loving service in unselfish

ministry to one's fellow creatures.

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The great religious teachers and prophets

of past ages were not extreme mystics. They

were God-knowing men and women who best

served their God by unselfish ministry to their

fellow mortals. Jesus often took his apostles away

by themselves for short periods to engage in meditation

and prayer, but for the most part he kept them in

service-contact with the multitudes. The soul

of man requires spiritual exercise as well as

spiritual nourishment.

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Religious ecstasy is permissible when

resulting from sane antecedents. but such

experiences are more often the outgrowth of

purely emotional influences than a manifestation

of deep spiritual character. Religious persons must

not regard every vivid psychologic presentiment

and every intense emotional experience as a divine

revelation or a spiritual communication.

Genuine spiritual ecstasy is usually associated

with great outward calmness and almost perfect

emotional control. But true prophetic vision

is a superpsychologic presentiment.

Such visitations are not pseudo hallucinations,

neither are they trancelike ecstacies.

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The Urantia Book

Part III, 91, 7

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