Star Symbol in Menu


Read and Search The Third Testament
     Article:  
(1-4) 
 Chap.:  
(1-5) 
 
Advanced search
Table of Contents for World Religion and World Politics   

 

 
Chapter 2
Why war, Armageddon and suffering?
As to the mystery of daily life, the most fundamental quest in mankind's existence is that for the solution of the mystery of life. In the very primitive or unintellectual stages of mankind this solution is no particular problem. These people's idea of life is still promoted almost exclusively by their instinct. The faculty of instinct constitutes an organic automatism through which the life of beings is promoted as long as they have not come so far in evolution as to have their faculty of intelligence developed, this faculty existing merely in a more or less latent state.
      It is the faculty of instinct that promotes the life of plants one hundred per cent, just as it also, to a considerable extent, promotes the life of animals. It is also this faculty that promotes all the automatic functions in the organisms of living beings. And, as we mentioned previously, it is also the faculty that automatically promotes the religious sense of the as yet unintellectual human being. This sense is the same as the faculty of feeling temporarily, through the unintellectual stages, that higher and mightier forms of life than those of terrestrial Man exist.
      These higher forms of life or beings were believed to rule over the powers of nature and, in fact, over people too. While instinct could make them aware that higher forms of life or beings existed, it could not make them aware of what these higher beings looked like or what form their lives took. They could only perceive the forms of life of these higher beings as analogous with their own forms of life. They therefore conceived these beings in their own image. They assumed that these higher beings also lived among war and combat as human beings do. They assumed that there were evil and good beings among them as there are among human beings. And from this idea of the higher forms of life or beings stem the terms "gods" and "devils". The gods were the good beings and the devils were the evil beings whom one should fear since they were mightier than the human beings. It was therefore a matter of ingratiating oneself with the good beings, the gods. And this idea gave birth to the idea of, and attitude to, a "providence". This idea and this attitude became what we today call "the worship of God".
      The idea of the Godhead became the underlying foundation for human beings' idea of morality. This morality in turn gave birth to the laws for their behaviour. Since this behaviour was based on the beings' idea of the Godhead, the same behaviour was bound to be more or less imperfect according as their idea of the Godhead was more or less imperfect. How could the idea of the Godhead be imperfect when it was born in the human being's mind automatically, of its instinct? All automatic functions born of the faculty of instinct in the beings' organisms, and in other circumstances, are normally infallibly in contact with reality. This is true, but we must here bear in mind that the faculty of instinct has not given birth to a complete idea of God. It has given birth only to the being's feeling that a providence or a godhead exists, but absolutely not what this godhead looks like in detail or appearance. This aspect of the idea of the Godhead is created by the beings' still very primitive, imperfect or unintellectual faculty of imagination, that is an ability whose results are neither intellectual nor intuitive. These imaginings about the Godhead, which the beings have created by virtue of this ability, are thus unintellectual and therefore to a greater or lesser extent unreal.
      The beings' idea of the Godhead and their ensuing morality and behaviour were thus based on more or less unreal or false imaginings in relation to the absolute real or cosmic truth or solution of the mystery of life. It lies entirely beyond what a human being, with his faculty to experience life borne merely by his instinct and imagination, can perceive and understand.
      The beings' idea of morality was born of their inner idea of the existence of higher beings, "gods" and "devils". It is this instinctive idea of the existence of higher beings that we today call "religious belief". This belief is the guiding star for the morality and behaviour of all peoples as long as they are quite unintellectual and have to base their lives on their faculties of instinct, gravity and imagination.
      So we see that human beings, at the primitive or unintellectual stages in evolution, exactly like the animals, are guided by their instinct. There is only the difference that the animals are unconscious of this guidance. They are not guided by any religious belief. Their instinct guides them to do what is for them a vital necessity.
      Human beings have, however, developed their faculty of thought so that they are able to form ideas about the life in which they live, even if these ideas, at the primitive stages, are quite unintellectual and thereby to a greater or lesser extent mistaken. It is this incorrectness that shows us the primitivity or unfinished state of their source. What is really true in the lives of these beings was thus only their instinctive idea of the presence of a higher power. What was more or less untrue was the ideas or descriptions, produced by the beings' unintellectual faculty of imagination of the appearance and daily lives of this higher power in the form of gods and devils. It was a matter of course that they could not conceive of the daily lives of these gigantic beings as being different from their own lives, apart from their appearing in a state that fulfilled all the dreams they dreamt but could not fulfil in their own lives.
      Thus arose an ideal to which the human beings could adjust their lives. These ideals must of course be a glorification of the killing principle, since this principle is the ruling principle of life in the animal kingdom and likewise in that aspect of the mentality of the unfinished human being we call the "animal" in the human. We have a good example of this idealization by Man of the killing principle in our Nordic mythology, in which the highest ideal was to kill and to be killed. Otherwise one would not get to "Valhalla", the "paradise" of this mythology. People lived among war, theft, plundering, killing and oppression of one another; and the greater one's prowess in this direction, the greater the favour in which one was held by the gods. That this existence of killing had to give birth to a multitude of sufferings is a matter of course. As the sufferings give birth to the humane faculty in human beings, which in turn means the faculty of feeling sympathy or love, all these killings or this murderous behaviour came to offend against this new state of feeling in the beings. And they began to imagine new ideals that better suited their incipient faculty of sympathy or neighbourly love. These imaginings were formed in new laws for behaviour preached by world redeemers, and the so-called world religions arose.
      Here in the West it was the Christian world religion that came to be the dominating one. In this world religion the ideal of love is nothing less than that one should love God above all things and one's neighbour as oneself. Furthermore it states that one should forgive one's neighbour not merely seven times a day, but seventy times seven times a day. Whatsoever one would that others should do to one, one should first do to them. Put up again your sword into its place, for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.
      But are these ideals now strictly observed by the peoples of the West? Certainly not. As the observance of these ideals is the absolute condition for the creation of a real or absolute peace on earth where all war, massacre, theft, plundering and oppression, execution, hate and revenge are impossibilities, it is not so surprising that people, even though they call themselves "Christians", live in war, Armageddon and suffering.


Comments can be sent to The Martinus Institute.
Information about errors and shortcomings as well as technical problems can be sent to webmaster.