The Story of Everything -- Paper 102: The Foundations of Religious Faith

Faith stimulates the realization that values can be translated from the material to the spiritual, from the human to the divine, from time into eternity. The certainties of science proceed from the intellect; but the certainties of religion spring from the entire personality. The indwelling Adjuster promotes a hunger for perfection that can be satisfied only by communion with God.

Religious experience requires spiritual growth, intellectual expansion, factual enlargement, and social service. No real religious growth can be accomplished without a highly active personality. Lazy people may seek to escape the rigors of religious activities by retreating to the false shelter of religious dogmas; poorly disciplined souls may use religion as an escape from the demands of living; but the true mission of religion is to prepare religionists to bravely face the vicissitudes of life. True religion must act.

The pursuit of knowledge constitutes science; the search for wisdom is philosophy; the love of God is religion; the hunger for truth is revelation. Revelation unifies history and coordinates science. Religion is to morality as love is to duty, sonship is to servitude, essence is to substance. The relation between an individual and his Creator is a living experience. To isolate religion as one part of life is a disintegration of life and a distortion of religion.

Human things must be known in order to be loved, but divine things must be loved in order to be known.

Prayer is part of religious experience, but it has been wrongly emphasized by modern religions to the neglect of the more essential communion of worship. The reflective powers of the mind are deepened and broadened by worship. Prayer enriches life, but worship illuminates destiny.