YES, HE is Talking to YOU! (continued)
Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
The sons of men are one and I am one with them. I seek to love, not hate; I seek to serve and not exact due service; I seek to heal, not hurt. This is the first stanza of the prayer entitled the Mantram of Unification. It starts with an affirmation of the Brotherhood of Man which, as a concept, is taught to us by the Christ. So much of Jesus message is in regard to the Fatherhood of God and, if we believe the Master at all, this would make all men brothers and children of the one Father. In the Old Testament there is little reference to the Fatherhood of God though there is much reference to God being the God of the fathers as the God of Abraham, the God of Issac and the God of Jacob. There is, in the prophets, some reference to His Fatherhood as this from Hosea: “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt” (Hosea 11:1) and this from the Book of Isaiah “Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O LORD, art our father, our redeemer; thy name is from everlasting” (Isaiah 63:16). Other than these there had just been a general understanding of God as the Father of humanity insofar as He created the world. There is also the saying in Psalms that Jesus references in speaking to the Jews: “I have said , Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High” (Psalm 82:6). All this is to say that the Jewish nation that Jesus came to teach had some familiarity with the notion of God the Father but little scriptural reference
In Jesus teaching however there is much emphasis placed on the Fatherhood of God. Not only for an understanding that God is the Creator and the Source but to actually emphasize this relationship. In His sayings and in His parables, the Master frequently uses the idea of God being the Father to us all and, in His prayers and comments He talks much of His own Father and Son relationship with God. In the Gospel of Matthew alone there are 42 verses that reference God as our Father and none of these is just idle mention. Based on the above it should be clear that this was an important part of the message of the Master and is the planting into the minds of men of a ‘newer’ reality that was not at all pronounced prior the Jesus teaching. We then should have the idea of the Fatherhood of God firmly planted in our minds and, if we believe that this is what the Master is telling us, we should have the idea of the Brotherhood of Man just as firmly planted. All the children of the one Father have no choice but to be brothers. The mantram goes on to affirm that we seek what the Master taught and that is Love; as we know and will see further in this series, Love is the essence of His teaching and His admonition is that we Love one another.
I seek to serve and not exact due service is the next line and another of the teachings of the Master who says to us, as His disciples, that: “And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant” (Matthew 20:27) and again “If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). Let us not forget that He also tells us that “If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am , there shall also my servant be: if any man serveme, him will my Father honour” (John 12:26) which is to say to us that there is honour in serving the Master and that He also tells us that serving Him is done through serving others. Most important is this scene from the Gospel of John; it says it all: “If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye know these things, happy are yeif ye do them” (John 13:14-17) and we should not think that this refers only to the washing of feet. The last line of this stanza is clearly the teaching and the way of the Master who went through all His time with us having compassion on those that were hurting. In several places in the gospels there is reference such as this: “....and great multitudes followed him, and he healed them all” (Matthew 12:15). Nowhere in any of the gospels is there any reference to His hurting any.
Now many people, Christian people, see prayers like this one and the deride them because they just don’t understand and don’t take the time to see. Based on the background of a saying or a prayer and not based on its content, many make their decisions to dislike and even disown. This should not be the case. This particular prayer comes from sources that some may consider occult but few detractors even understand the meaning of this word. Many just know it is a word spoken badly of by the ministers and preachers that they listen to. They likely don’t know that these same ministers and preachers probably have no better idea than they do of the nature of things. For us however it is different because we look beyond the outer appearance; we accept and do the words of the Master who tells us to “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment” (John 7:24). And what is righteous judgment? For us it is defined (from earlier posts) as: Purity of heart and rectitude of life; conformity of heart and life to the divine law. Righteousness, as used in Scripture and theology, in which it is chiefly used, is nearly equivalent to holiness, comprehending holy principles and affections of heart, and conformity of life to the divine law. It includes all we call justice, honesty and virtue, with holy affections; in short, it is true religion*. Looking at things this way will surely give us the proper understanding of all things and is contrary to having preconceived ideas of things, prejudices about certain things or people or any self righteous attitude that prevents us from judging righteous judgment. Repeating one more point regarding how we should look at things; in regard to wisdom James says this: “But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy” (James 3:17).
I did not intend to spend this much space on this, and this will not likely be the case with the rest of this prayer, but it is important to understand that there are things of God, from God and for God that do not have a direct relationship to the Christian churches as we know them. It is also important to understand that these prayers and meditations that may appear here are firmly founded in real Christian ideals and in the teaching of our Lord and Master, Christ Jesus.
Continuing with our direct theme of Love is the Fulfilling of the Law we go from the idea of neighbour which we covered in the last post to the idea of brother which we will begin to explore here. Based on the idea of the Fatherhood of God we need to see also the Brotherhood of Man is a statement of fact and there is really no way around this if our motives are good Christian motives. This idea of brother includes all that we could consider of neighbour and all that we said regarding neighbour can be said to regard brother as well. In Christ’s teaching, these two terms could be considered synonyms. Let us look at how this word is used. Speaking of any man the Master tells us that: “But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore if thou bringthy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee” (Matthew 2:22-23). Now we know that Jesus is talking to a multitude of the Jews and that His meaning is beyond blood relationships. We also know that this is well before any perceived establishment of any sort of Christian brothers that the Master could be referring to. The reference here is to just other people; perhaps people that we know but just other people nonetheless. Perhaps we can look at a brother as a closer type of neighbour.
The word translated brother is from the Greek word adelphos which, according to the lexicon means: a brother, whether born of the same two parents or only of the same father or mother; having the same national ancestor, belonging to the same people, or countryman; any fellow or man; a fellow believer, united to another by the bond of affection; an associate in employment or office; brethren in Christ, his brothers by blood; all men; apostles; Christians, as those who are exalted to the same heavenly place**. Many of these defining terms are from the use of this word in the epistles where the apostles are speaking to or of ‘the brethren’ but this is not true in the words of the Master except as one can say that He is speaking to His group of disciples as brothers. Here we should be careful and understand that, by extension, He is speaking to us all. Strong’s gives us this for adelphos: brother, fellow countryman, neighbour (often inclusive in gender); by extension a fellow believer in the family of faith; in the plural ‘brothers’ regularly refers to men and women***. Note here the inclusion of neighbour.
So much of Jesus teaching is in regard to how we should treat our brother and all these things that He teaches are found in the larger definition of our subject word Love. We deal here with the word brother because it is so intimately related to the idea and the ideal that the Master teaches. Again, the Fatherhood of God means the Brotherhood of Man and in this sense every man is our neighbour and being neighbour, each is entitled to our Love. We must remember the idea of Love that we established many posts ago which we will repeat here and explain in the next post. Our definition of Love is a combination of two words from the translations of the Greek word agape; Love and Charity. We broke down our definition, based on the Master’s saying of the Great Commandment, as follows:
What then is the Love the Lord thy God part of our definition? It is: In short, we love whatever gives us pleasure and delight, whether animal or intellectual; and if our hearts are right, we love God above all things, as the sum of all excellence and all the attributes which can communicate happiness to intelligent beings. In other words, the christian loves God with the love of complacency in his attributes, the love of benevolence towards the interest of his kingdom, and the love of gratitude for favors received“*. Having said this, what then is the Love thy neighbour? It is: In a general sense, love, benevolence, good will; that disposition of heart which inclines men to think favorably of their fellow men, and to do them good. In a theological sense, it includes supreme love to God, and universal good will to men“*
These definitions contain the essence of His saying: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it , Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:37-39).
Note on the Quote of the Day
This daily blog also has a Quote of the Day which may not be in any way related to the essay. Many of these will be from the Bible and some just prayers or meditations that may have an influence on you and are in line with the subject matter of this blog. As the quote will change daily and will not store with the post, it is repeated in this section with the book reference and comment.
The sons of men are one and I am one with them.
I seek to love, not hate;
I seek to serve and not exact due service;
I seek to heal, not hurt.
Let pain bring due reward of light and love.
Let the Soul control the outer form, and life and all events,
And bring to light the love that underlies the happenings of the time.
Let vision come and insight.
Let the future stand revealed.
Let inner union demonstrate and outer cleavages be gone.
Let love prevail.
Let all men love.
Today’s Quote of the Day is called the Mantram of Unification and is part of the Ancient Wisdom as taught by a Master of the Wisdom who is simply called The Tibetan. We will leave this for three days to discuss its three stanzas which we will start in the next post as part of our overall theme of Love is the Fulfilling of the Law. The first stanza being discussed above, we should look today at the second; it is a bit more esoteric than the first but builds upon the Christian idea of the first to give us a better understanding of where we are in today’s world.
- * Websters Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1828 and 1913
- ** New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
- *** Strongest Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible – 2001
