Manual For Teachers- 28: What Is the Resurrection?
Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death. It is a reawakening or a rebirth; a change of mind about the meaning of the world. It is the acceptance of the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of the world’s purpose; the acceptance of the Atonement for oneself. It is the end of dreams of misery, and the glad awareness of the Holy Spirit’s final dream. It is the recognition of the gifts of God. It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication. It is the lesson in which learning ends, for it is consummated and surpassed with this. It is the invitation to God to take His final step. It is the relinquishment of all other purposes, all other interests, all other wishes, and all other concerns. It is the single desire of the Son for the Father.
The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. Life is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell. Love is no longer feared, but gladly welcomed. Idols have disappeared, and the remembrance of God shines unimpeded across the world. Christ’s face is seen in every living thing, and nothing is held in darkness apart from the light of forgiveness. There is no sorrow still upon the earth. The joy of Heaven has come upon it.
Here the curriculum ends. From here on no directions are needed. Vision is wholly corrected and all mistakes undone. Attack is meaningless, as peace has come. The goal of the curriculum has been achieved. Thoughts turn to Heaven and away from hell. All longings are satisfied, for what remains unanswered or incomplete? The last illusion spreads over the world, forgiving all things and replacing all attack. The whole reversal is accomplished. Nothing is left to contradict the Word of God. There is no opposition to the truth. And now the truth can come at last. How quickly will it come as it is asked to enter and envelop such a world!
All living hearts are tranquil, with a stir of deep anticipation, for the time of everlasting things is now at hand. There is no death. The Son of God is free. And in his freedom is the end of fear. No hidden places now remain on earth to shelter sick illusions, dreams of fear, and misperceptions of the universe. All things are seen in light, and in the light their purpose is transformed and understood. And we, God’s children, rise up from the dust and look upon our perfect sinlessness. The song of Heaven sounds around the world, as it is lifted up and brought to truth.
Now there are no distinctions. Differences have disappeared, and love looks on itself. What further sight is needed? What remains that vision could accomplish? We have seen the face of Christ, His sinlessness, His love behind all forms, beyond all purposes. Holy are we because His holiness has set us free indeed, and we accept His holiness as ours; as it is. As God created us so will we be forever and forever, and we wish for nothing but His will to be our own. Illusions of another will are lost, for unity of purpose has been found.
These things await us all, but we are not prepared as yet to welcome them with joy. As long as any mind remains possessed of evil dreams, the thought of hell is real. God’s teachers have the goal of wakening the minds of those asleep and seeing there the vision of Christ’s face, to take the place of what they dream. The thought of murder is replaced with blessing. Judgment is laid by and given Him Whose function judgment is. And in His Final Judgment is restored the truth about the holy Son of God. He is redeemed, for he has heard God’s Word and understood its meaning. He is free because he let God’s Voice proclaim the truth. And all he sought before to crucify are resurrected with him, by his side as he prepares with them to meet his God.
VII. Believing in the Resurrection
It is impossible not to believe what you see, but it is equally impossible to see what you do not believe. Perceptions are built up on the basis of experience, and experience leads to beliefs. It is not until beliefs are fixed that perceptions stabilize. In effect, then, what you believe you do see. That is what I meant when I said “Blessed are ye who have not seen and still believe,” for those who believe in the resurrection will see it. The resurrection is the complete triumph of Christ over the ego, not by attack, but by transcendence. For Christ does rise above the ego and all its works, and ascends to the Father and His Kingdom.
Would you join in the resurrection or the crucifixion? Would you condemn your brothers or free them? Would you transcend your prison and ascend to the Father? For these questions are all the same, and are answered together. There has been much confusion about what perception means, because the same word is used both for awareness and for the interpretation of awareness. But you cannot be aware without interpretation, and what you perceive is your interpretation. This course is perfectly clear. You do not see it clearly because you are interpreting against it, and therefore do not believe it. And if belief determines perception, you do not perceive what it means, and therefore do not accept it.
Yet different experiences lead to different beliefs, and with them different perceptions, for perceptions are learned with beliefs, and experience teaches. I am leading you to a new kind of experience which you will become less and less willing to deny. Learning of Christ is easy, for to perceive with Him involves no strain at all. His perceptions are your natural awareness, and it is only the distortions which you have introduced that tire you. Let the Christ in you interpret for you, and do not try to limit what you see by narrow little beliefs that are unworthy of God’s Son. For until Christ comes into His Own, the Son of God will see himself as fatherless.
I am your resurrection and your life. You live in me because you live in God. And everyone lives in you, as you live in everyone. Can you, then, perceive unworthiness in a brother and not perceive it in yourself? And can you perceive it in yourself and not perceive it in God? Believe in the resurrection because it has been accomplished, and it has been accomplished in you. This is as true now as it will ever be, for the resurrection is the will of God, which knows no time and no exceptions. But make no exceptions yourself, or you will not perceive what has been accomplished for you. For we ascend unto the Father together, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, for such is the nature of God’s Son as His Father created him.
Do not underestimate the power of the devotion of God’s Son, nor the power over him of the god he worships. For he places himself at the altar of his god, whether it be the god he made or the God Who created him. That is why his slavery is as complete as his freedom, for he will obey only the god he accepts.
The god of the crucifixion demands that he crucify, and his worshippers obey. In his name they crucify themselves, believing that the power of the Son of God is born out of sacrifice and pain. The God of the resurrection demands nothing, for He does not will to take away. He does not require obedience, for obedience implies submission. He would only have you learn your own will and follow it, not in the spirit of sacrifice and submission, but in the gladness of freedom.
Resurrection must compel your allegiance gladly, because it is the symbol of joy. Its whole compelling power lies in the fact that it represents what you want to be. The freedom to leave behind everything that hurts you and humbles you and frightens you cannot be thrust upon you. But it can be offered you through the grace of God, and you can accept it by His grace, for God is gracious to His Son, accepting him without question as His Own. Who, then, is your own? The Father has given you all that is His, and He Himself is yours with them. Guard them in their resurrection, for otherwise you will not awake in God, safely surrounded by what is yours forever.
You will not find peace until you have removed the nails from the hands of God’s Son and taken the last thorn from his forehead. The love of God surrounds His Son whom the god of the crucifixion condemns. Teach not that I died in vain. Teach rather that I did not die by demonstrating that I live in you. For the undoing of the crucifixion of God’s Son is the work of the redemption, in which everyone has a part of equal value. God does not judge His blameless Son. Having given Himself to him, how could it be otherwise?
You have nailed yourself to a cross and placed a crown of thorns upon your own head. Yet you cannot crucify God’s Son, for the will of God cannot die. His Son has been redeemed from his own crucifixion, and you cannot assign to death whom God has given eternal life. The dream of the crucifixion of God’s Son still lies heavy on your eyes, but what you see in dreams is not reality. While you perceive the Son of God as crucified, you are asleep. And as long as you believe that you can crucify him, you are only having a nightmare. You who are beginning to wake are still aware of dreams and have not yet forgotten them.
The forgetting of dreams and the awareness of Christ comes with the awakening of others to share your redemption. You will awaken to your own call, for the call to awaken is within you. If I live in you, you are awake. But you must see the works I do through you, or you will not perceive that I have done them unto you. Do not set limits on what you believe I can do through you, or you will not accept what I can do for you. For it is done already, and unless you give all that you have received, you will not know that your redeemer liveth and that you have awakened with him.
Redemption is recognized only by sharing it. God’s Son is saved. Bring only this awareness to the Sonship, and you will have a part in the redemption as valuable as mine, for your part must be like mine if you learn it of me. If you believe that yours is limited, you are limiting mine. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because all of God’s Sons are of equal value, and their equality is their oneness. The whole power of God is in every part of Him, and nothing contradictory to His will is either great or small. What does not exist has no size and no measure. To God all things are possible. And to Christ it is given to be like the Father.
Holy Week
This is Palm Sunday, the celebration of victory and the acceptance of the truth. Let us not spend this holy week brooding on the crucifixion of God’s Son, but happily in the celebration of his release. For Easter is the sign of peace, not pain. A slain Christ has no meaning. But a risen Christ becomes the symbol of the Son of God’s forgiveness upon himself; the sign he looks upon himself as healed and whole.
This week begins with palms and ends with lilies, the white and holy sign the Son of God is innocent. Let no dark signs of crucifixion intervene between the journey and its purpose; between the acceptance of the truth and its expression. This week we celebrate eternal life, not death. And we honor the perfect purity of the Son of God, and not his sins.
Offer each other the gift of lilies, not the crown of thorns; the gift of love, and not the “gift” of fear. You stand beside each other, thorns in one hand and lilies in the other, uncertain which to give. Join now with me and throw away the thorns, offering the lilies to replace them. This Easter I would have the gift of your forgiveness, offered by you to me and returned by me to you. We cannot be united in crucifixion and in death. Nor can the resurrection be complete till your forgiveness rests on Christ, along with mine.
A week is short, and yet this holy week is the symbol of the whole journey that the Son of God has undertaken. He started with the sign of victory, the promise of the resurrection, already given him. Let him not wander into the temptation of crucifixion and delay him there. Help him go in peace beyond it, with the light of his own innocence lighting his way to his redemption and release. Hold him not back with thorns and nails when his redemption is so near. But let the whiteness of your shining gift of lilies speed him on his way to resurrection.
Easter is not the celebration of the cost of sin, but of its end. If you see glimpses of the face of Christ behind the veil, looking between the snow-white petals of the lilies you have received and given as your gift, you will behold each other’s face and recognize it. I was a stranger and you took me in, not knowing who I was. But for your gift of lilies, you will know. In your forgiveness of this stranger, alien to you and yet your ancient friend, lie his release and your redemption with him. The time of Easter is a time of joy, and not of mourning. Look on your risen friend and celebrate his holiness along with me. For Easter is the time of your salvation, along with mine.
A Course in Miracles: Lesson 196 - It Can Be But Myself I Crucify
It can be but myself I crucify. All that I do, I do unto myself. If I attack, I suffer. But if I forgive, salvation will be given me. I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
It Can Be But Myself I Crucify
When this is firmly understood and kept in full awareness, you will not attempt to harm yourself, nor make your body slave to vengeance. You will not attack yourself, and you will realize that to attack another is but to attack yourself. You will be free of the insane belief that to attack a brother saves yourself. And you will understand his safety is your own, and in his healing you are healed.
Perhaps at first you will not understand how mercy, limitless and with all things held in its sure protection, can be found in the idea we practice for today. It may, in fact, appear to be a sign that punishment can never be escaped, because the ego, under what it sees as threat, is quick to cite the truth to save its lies. Yet must it fail to understand the truth it uses thus. But you can learn to see these foolish applications and deny the meaning they appear to have.
Thus do you also teach your mind that you are not an ego, for the ways in which the ego would distort the truth will not deceive you longer. You will not believe you are a body to be crucified. And you will see within today’s idea the light of resurrection, looking past all thoughts of crucifixion and of death to thoughts of liberation and of life.
Today’s idea is one step we take in leading us from bondage to the state of perfect freedom. Let us take this step today, that we may quickly go the way salvation shows us, taking every step in its appointed sequence as the mind relinquishes its burdens one by one. It is not time we need for this. It is but willingness. And what would seem to need a thousand years can easily be done in just one instant by the grace of God.
The dreary, hopeless thought that you can make attacks on others and escape yourself has nailed you to the cross. Perhaps it seems to be salvation, yet it merely stands for the belief the fear of God is real. And what is that but hell? Who could believe his Father is his deadly enemy, separate from him and waiting to destroy his life and blot him from the universe, without the fear of hell upon his heart?
Such is the form of madness you believe if you accept the fearful thought you can attack another and be free yourself. Until this form is changed there is no hope. Until you see that this, at least, must be entirely impossible, how could there be escape? The fear of God is real to anyone who thinks this thought is true, and he will not perceive its foolishness or even see that it is there, so that it would be possible to question it.
To question it at all, its form must first be changed at least as much as will permit fear of retaliation to abate, and the responsibility returned to some extent to you. From there you can at least consider if you want to go along this painful path. Until this shift has been accomplished, you cannot perceive that it is but your thoughts which bring you fear, and your deliverance depends on you.
Our next steps will be easy if you take this one today. From there we go ahead quite rapidly. For once you understand it is impossible that you be hurt except by your own thoughts, the fear of God must disappear. You do not now believe that fear is caused without. And God, Whom you had thought to banish, can be welcomed back within the holy mind He never left.
Salvation’s song can certainly be heard in the idea we practice for today. If it can be but you you crucify, you did not hurt the world, and need not fear its vengeance and pursuit. Nor need you hide in terror from the deadly fear of God projection hides behind. The thing you dread the most is your salvation. You are strong, and it is strength you want. And you are free, and glad of freedom. You have sought to be both weak and bound, because you feared your strength and freedom. Yet salvation lies in them.
There is an instant in which terror seems to grip your mind so wholly that escape appears quite hopeless. When you realize, once and for all, that it is you you fear, the mind perceives itself as split. And this had been concealed while you believed attack could be directed outward and returned from outside to within. It seemed to be an enemy outside you had to fear. And thus a god outside yourself became your mortal enemy, the source of fear.
Now, for an instant, is a murderer perceived within you, eager for your death, intent on plotting punishment for you until the time when it can kill at last. Yet in this instant is the time as well in which salvation comes. For fear of God has disappeared, and you can call on Him to save you from illusions in His love, calling Him Father and yourself His Son. Pray that the instant may be soon—today! Step back from fear and make advance to love.
There is no thought of God that does not go with you to help you reach that instant, and to go beyond it quickly, surely, and forever. When the fear of God is gone, there are no obstacles which still remain between you and the holy peace of God. How kind and merciful is the idea we practice! Give it welcome, as you should, for it is your release. It is indeed but you your mind can try to crucify, yet your redemption too will come from you.
Do not embark on foolish journeys, because they are indeed in vain. The ego may will them because the ego is both lean and foolish, but the spirit cannot embark on them because it is forever unwilling to depart from its foundation. The journey to the cross should be the last foolish journey for every mind. Do not dwell upon it, but dismiss it as accomplished. If you can accept that as your own last foolish journey, you are free also to join my resurrection. Human living has indeed been needlessly wasted in repetition compulsion. It reenacts the separation, the loss of power, the foolish journey of the ego in its attempts at reparation, and finally the crucifixion of the body, or death. Repetition compulsions can be endless, unless they are given up by an act of will or, more properly, an active creation. Do not make the pathetic human error of “clinging to the old rugged cross.” The only message of the crucifixion is in respect to your ability to overcome the cross. Unless you do so, you are free to crucify yourself as often as you choose. But this was not the gospel I intended to offer you. We have another journey to undertake, and I hope that, if you will read these teachings carefully, they will help to prepare you to undertake it. - ACIM
The Message of the Crucifixion (From Chapter 6)
The relationship of anger to attack is obvious, but the inevitable association of anger and fear is not always so clear. Anger always involves projection of separation, which must ultimately be accepted as entirely one’s own responsibility. Anger cannot occur unless you believe that you have been attacked, the attack was unjust, and you are in no way responsible for it. Given these three wholly irrational premises, the equally irrational conclusion that a brother is worthy of attack rather than of love follows.
What can be expected from insane premises except an insane conclusion? The way to undo an insane conclusion is always to consider the sanity of the premises on which it rests. You cannot be attacked, attack has no justification, and you are responsible for what you believe.
You have been asked to take me as your model for learning. And we have said that an extreme example is a particularly helpful learning device. Everyone teaches, and teaches all the time. This is a responsibility which he assumes inevitably the moment he has accepted any premises at all, and no one can organize his life without any thought system. Once he has developed a thought system of any kind, he lives by it and teaches it.
You have been chosen to teach the Atonement precisely because you have been an example of allegiance to your thought system, and therefore have developed the capacity for allegiance. It has indeed been misplaced. Some individuals have become outstanding examples of allegiance to apathy, and others have become startling examples of fidelity to variability. But these are forms of faith, which one can grow willing to redirect. You cannot doubt the strength of your devotion when you consider how faithfully you have observed it. It is quite evident that you have already developed the ability to follow a better model, if you can accept it.
We have not dwelt upon the crucifixion, because of its fearful connotations. The only emphasis we have laid upon it is that it was not a form of punishment. But we know that nothing can be really explained only in negative terms. There is a positive interpretation of the crucifixion which is wholly devoid of fear, and therefore wholly benign in what it teaches, if it is properly understood. The crucifixion is nothing more than an extreme example. Its value, like the value of any teaching device, lies solely in the kind of learning it facilitates. It can be, and has been, misunderstood. But this is only because the fearful are apt to perceive fearfully.
I told you before that you can always call on me to share my decision and thus make it stronger. I also told you that the crucifixion was the last foolish journey that the Sonship need take, and that it should mean release from fear to everyone who understands it. While we emphasized the resurrection only before, the purpose of the crucifixion and how it actually led to the resurrection was not clarified at that time. Nevertheless, it has a definite contribution to make to your own life, and if you will consider it without fear, it will help you understand your own role as a teacher.
You have reacted for years as if you were being crucified. This is a marked tendency of the separated, who always refuse to consider what they have done to themselves. Projection means anger, anger fosters assault, and assault promotes fear. The real meaning of the crucifixion lies in the apparent intensity of the assault of some of the Sons of God upon a brother. This, of course, is impossible, and must be fully understood as an impossibility. In fact, unless it is fully understood as only that, I cannot serve as a real model for learning.
Assault can ultimately be made only on the body. There is little doubt that one body can assault another and can even destroy it. But if destruction itself is impossible, then anything that is destructible cannot be real. Therefore, its destruction does not justify anger. To the extent to which you believe it does, you must be accepting false premises and teaching them to others.
The message which the crucifixion was intended to teach was that it is not necessary to perceive any form of assault as persecution, because you cannot be persecuted. If you respond with anger, you must be equating yourself with the destructible, and are therefore regarding yourself insanely. I have made it perfectly clear that I am like you and you are like me. But our fundamental equality can be demonstrated only through joint decision.
You are free to perceive yourself as persecuted if you choose, but you might remember when you do choose to react that way that I was persecuted as the world judges, and did not share this evaluation for myself. And because I did not share it, I did not strengthen it. I therefore offered you a different interpretation of attack, and one which I do want to share with you. If you will believe it, you will help me teach it.
We have said before, “As you teach, so shall you learn.” If you react as if you are persecuted, you are teaching persecution. This is not a lesson which the Sons of God should want to teach if they are to realize their own salvation. Rather, teach your own perfect immunity, which is the truth in you, and know that it cannot be assailed. Do not protect it yourself, or you have believed that it is assailable.
You are not asked to be crucified, because that was part of my own teaching contribution. You are merely asked to follow my example in the face of much less extreme temptations to misperceive, and not to accept them falsely as justifications for anger. There can be no justification for the unjustifiable. Do not believe there is, and do not teach that there is. Remember always that what you believe you will teach. Believe with me, and we will become equal as teachers.
Your resurrection is your reawakening. I am the model for rebirth, but rebirth itself is merely the dawning on your mind of what is already in it. God placed it there Himself, and so it is true forever. I believed in it, and therefore made it forever true for me. Help me to teach it to our brothers in the name of the Kingdom of God. But first believe that it is true for you, or you will teach amiss.
My brothers slept during the so-called “agony in the garden,” but I could not be angry at them, because I had learned I could not be abandoned. Peter swore he would never deny me, but he did so three times. It should be noted that he did offer to defend me with the sword, which I naturally refused, not being at all in need of bodily protection. I am sorry when my brothers do not share my decision to hear (and be) only one Voice, because it weakens them as teachers and learners. Yet I know that they cannot really betray themselves or me, and that it is still on them that I must build my church.
There is no choice in this, because only you can be the foundation of God’s church. A church is where an altar is, and the presence of the altar is what makes it a church. Any church which does not inspire love has a hidden altar which is not serving the purpose for which God intended it. I must found His church on you, because you who accept me as a model are literally my disciple. Disciples are followers, but if the model they follow has chosen to save them pain in all respects, they are probably unwise not to follow him.
I elected, both for your sake and mine, to demonstrate that the most outrageous assault, as judged by the ego, did not matter. As the world judges these things, but not as God knows them, I was betrayed, abandoned, beaten, torn, and finally killed. It was perfectly clear that this was only because of the projection of others onto me, because I had not harmed anyone and had healed many.
We are still equal as learners, even though we need not have equal experiences. The Holy Spirit is glad when you can learn enough from mine to be reawakened by them. That was their only purpose, and that is the only way in which I can be perceived as the way, the truth, and the life. When you hear only one Voice, you are never called on to sacrifice. On the contrary, by enabling yourself to hear the Holy Spirit in others, you can learn from their experiences and gain from them without experiencing them. That is because the Holy Spirit is one, and anyone who listens is inevitably led to demonstrate His way for all. You are not persecuted, nor was I. You are not asked to repeat my experience, because the Holy Spirit, Which we share, makes this unnecessary. But to use my experiences constructively for yourself, you must still follow my example in how to perceive them.
My brothers and yours are constantly engaged in justifying the unjustifiable. My one lesson, which I must teach as I learned, is that no perception which is out of accord with the judgment of the Holy Spirit can be justified. I undertook to show this was true in a very extreme case, merely because this would serve as a good teaching aid to those whose temptations to give in to anger and assault would not be as extreme.
I will with God Himself that none of His Sons should suffer. Remember that the Holy Spirit is the communication link between God the Father and His separated Sons. If you will listen to His Voice, you will know that you cannot either hurt or be hurt, but that many need your blessing to help them hear this for themselves. When you perceive only this need in them, and do not respond to any others, you will have learned of me, and be as eager to share your learning as I am. The crucifixion cannot be shared, because it is the symbol of projection. But the resurrection is the symbol of sharing, because the reawakening of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its wholeness. Only this is knowledge.
The message of the crucifixion is very simple and perfectly clear: Teach only love, for that is what you are. If you interpret it in any other way, you are using it as a weapon for assault rather than as the call to peace for which it was intended. The Apostles often misunderstood it, and always for the same reason that makes anyone misunderstand anything. Their own imperfect love made them vulnerable to projection, and out of their own fear they spoke of the wrath of God as His retaliatory weapon. They also could not speak of the crucifixion entirely without anger, because their own sense of guilt had made them angry.
There are some glaring examples of upside-down thinking in the New Testament, whose whole gospel is only the message of love. These are not at all like the several slips into impatience which I made, because I had learned the Atonement prayer, which I also came to teach, too well to engage in upside-down thinking myself. If the Apostles had not felt guilty, they never could have quoted me as saying, “I come not to bring peace, but a sword.” This is clearly the exact opposite of everything I taught.
Nor could they have described my reactions to Judas Iscariot as they did, if they had really understood me. They could not have believed that I could have said, “Betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?” unless they thought I believed in betrayal. The whole message of the crucifixion was simply that I did not. The punishment which I am said to have called forth upon Judas was a similar reversal. Judas was my brother and a Son of God, as much a part of the Sonship as myself. Was it likely that I would condemn him when I was ready to demonstrate that condemnation is impossible?
I am very grateful to the Apostles for their teaching, and fully aware of the extent of their devotion to me. But as you read their teachings, remember that I told them myself that there was much they would understand later, because they were not wholly ready to follow me at the time. I emphasize this only because I do not want you to allow any fear to enter into the thought system toward which I am guiding you. I do not call for martyrs but for teachers.
Many people are outstanding examples of this confusion. They have literally believed for years that teaching is martyrdom. This is because they think that teaching leads to crucifixion rather than to reawakening. The upside-down nature of this association is so obvious that they could only make it because they feel guilty. No one is punished for sins, and the Sons of God are not sinners. Any concept of punishment involves the projection of blame, and reinforces the idea that blame is justified. The behavior that results is a lesson in blame, just as all behavior teaches the beliefs that motivate it.
The crucifixion was a complex of behaviors arising out of clearly opposed thought systems. As such, it is the perfect symbol of conflict between the ego and the Son of God. It was as much intrapersonal as interpersonal then, just as it is now, and it is still just as real. But because it is just as real now, its lesson too has equal reality when it is learned.
Atonement without Sacrifice
There is one more point which must be perfectly clear before any residual fear which you may still associate with miracles becomes entirely groundless. The crucifixion did not establish the Atonement; the resurrection did. This is a point which many very sincere Christians have misunderstood. Nobody who was free of the scarcity fallacy could possibly have made this mistake.
If the crucifixion is seen from an upside-down point of view, it certainly does appear as if God permitted and even encouraged one of His Sons to suffer because he was good. Many very devoted ministers preach this every day. This particularly unfortunate interpretation, which actually arose out of the combined projection of a large number of my own would-be followers, has led many people to be bitterly afraid of God. This particularly anti-religious concept happens to enter into many religions, and this is neither by chance nor coincidence.
The real Christian would have to pause and ask, "How could this be?" Is it likely that God Himself would be capable of the kind of thinking which His Own words have clearly stated is unworthy of His children?
The best defense, as always, is not to attack another's position, but rather to protect the truth. It is not necessary to consider anything acceptable if you have to turn a whole frame of reference around in order to justify it. This procedure is painful in its minor applications and genuinely tragic on a mass basis. Persecution is a frequent result, justified by the terrible misperception that God Himself persecuted His Own Son on behalf of salvation. The very words are meaningless.
It has always been particularly difficult to overcome this because, although the error itself is no harder to overcome than any other error, people are unwilling to give it up because of its prominent escape value. In milder forms, a parent says, "This hurts me more than it hurts you," and feels exonerated in beating a child. Can you believe that the Father really thinks this way? It is so essential that all such thinking be dispelled that we must be very sure that nothing of this kind remains in your mind. I was not punished because you were bad. The wholly benign lesson which the Atonement teaches is wholly lost if it is tainted with this kind of distortion in any form.
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God Himself is not symbolic; He is Fact. The Atonement, too, is totally without symbolism. It is perfectly clear, because it exists in light. Only the world’s attempts to shroud it in darkness have made it inaccessible to the unwilling and ambiguous to the partly willing. The Atonement itself radiates nothing but truth. It therefore epitomizes harmlessness and sheds only blessing. It could not do this if it arose from anything other than perfect innocence. Innocence is wisdom, because it is unaware of evil, which does not exist. It is, however, perfectly aware of everything that is true.
The resurrection demonstrated that nothing can destroy truth. Good can withstand any form of evil, because light abolishes all forms of darkness. The Atonement is thus the perfect lesson. It is the final demonstration that all of the other lessons which I taught are true. You are released from all errors if you believe in this. The deductive approach to teaching accepts the generalization which is applicable to all single instances, rather than building up the generalization after analyzing numerous single instances separately. If you can accept the One Generalization now, there will be no need to learn from many smaller lessons.
Nothing can prevail against a Son of God who commends his spirit into the hands of his Father. By doing this, the mind awakens from its sleep and remembers its Creator. All sense of separation disappears and level confusion vanishes. The Son of God is part of the Holy Trinity, but the Trinity Itself is one. There is no confusion within Its levels, because they are of one Mind and one will. This single purpose creates perfect integration, and establishes the reign of the peace of God.
But this vision can be perceived only by the truly innocent. Because their hearts are pure, they defend true perception, instead of defending themselves against it. Understanding the lesson of the Atonement, they are without the will to attack, and therefore they see truly. This is what the Bible means when it says, “And when He shall appear (or be perceived) we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
Sacrifice is a notion totally unknown to God. It arises solely from fear of the records.
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I have been correctly referred to in the Bible as “the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world.” Yet those who represent the lamb as bloodstained (an all-too-widespread conceptual error) do not understand the meaning of the symbol. Correctly understood, the symbol is a very simple parable or teaching device, which merely depicts my innocence. The lion and the lamb lying down together refers to the fact that strength and innocence are not in conflict, but naturally live in peace. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” is another way of saying the same thing. Only the innocent can see God.
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The lamb “taketh away the sins of the world” only in the sense that the state of innocence, or grace, is one in which the meaning of the Atonement is perfectly apparent. The innocence of God is the true state of the mind of His Son. In this state, your mind does see God, and because you see Him as He is, you know that the Atonement, not sacrifice, is the only appropriate gift to your own altar, where nothing except perfection truly belongs. The understanding of the innocent is truth. That is why their altars are truly radiant.