Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1244

1244. But things are entirely different when it is a matter of a human being's general view of his neighbour, his surroundings and the laws of society, in brief, of everything that comes under the concept of morality. Here one actually demands that all human beings share the authorised view of the "flock" or society itself, a view that is in turn defined in its judicial system of laws. Those who do not share this view and must therefore be in disharmony with themselves through having to accept and comply with the perception and laws appertaining to this view, and who therefore cannot always muster the respect for the law that is demanded in order to be "good citizens", which thus means, "good members of the flock", are therefore denounced as "criminals". It is thus assumed that every being must be perfectly able to master the art or the subject of complying with the state's judicial system of laws and thereby be a "good member of the flock" or a "good citizen" in the specific "flock" or the specific society into which he or she is born. And respect for this requirement is promoted solely by means of "prisons" or "jails" within whose walls "criminals" are thus "chastised" and "punished". As long as these "jails" and "prisons" live up to their names, and our "younger brothers" in evolution are still "punished" within their walls with "bread and water", "imprisonment in a dark cell", "solitary confinement", "hard labour", "corporal punishment" and other phenomena that are directly injurious to both mental and physical health, and moreover are debased and tormented by being clothed in the traditional "prison uniforms" – quite apart from the fact that in the worst cases they may be executed or murdered – then society is still the greatest promoter of "revenge" and "punishment", that is, a promoter of precisely the same phenomena for which it judges and "punishes" its "criminals". Modern "punitive" society is thereby itself a "criminal", if not to say still a "heathen" that does not know the most fundamental laws of humaneness or neighbourly love. As long as society, the state or nation pays to sustain hundreds of churches and houses of God complete with thousands of authorised priests so that these priests, on every Sunday and religious holiday, can inform society's citizens that they must not "take revenge" on their "neighbour", but on the contrary must "forgive" him and "turn the right cheek" and so on, indeed, must "love him as themselves", and as long as society through these priests also says that "all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword", then this society expresses to a degree merely the mental stage or character of a "Pharisee". It loves "in word and tongue" but not "in deed and truth". It preaches humanism and love to its citizens at the same time as it makes laws with which it forces every man to be a "soldier" or "warrior", thus making him duty bound to take part in murdering the "enemies" of the state and destroying their property when this society or state finds it appropriate, just as it itself, with the former "penal institutions", "takes revenge" on its own citizens when it likewise finds it appropriate. Thus the state preaches morality and humaneness, but organises its purely practical life on the actual practising of "revenge" and "punishment". "Perfect Christianity" thus does not occur within the structure of the state itself or in its administration. Modern, so-called "Christian nations" cannot therefore deny that they still belong to the "heathen stage". They are to a corresponding extent still "heathen states".