8.26.07 Christian Reflections on The Secret #8 The Secret to the World
WESTMINSTER PULPIT
The Rev. Dr. David Thompson
August 26, 2007 “Christian Reflections on The Secret” #8 The Secret to the World
Text:You have learned how it was said: “Eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth”. But I say this to you “Offer the wicked man no resistance.” Matthew 5: 18
The Secret Team says that what we resist we attract because we are powerfully focused upon it with emotion. They say we cannot help the world by focusing on the negative things. As we focus on the world’s negative events we not only add energy to them but we also introduce more negative things into our own lives. So instead of focusing on the world’s problems we need to give our attention and energy to trust, love, abundance, education and peace. We need to praise and bless everything in the world and we will dissolve negativity and discord. We need to align ourselves with the highest value which is love.
If there is one thing that can be said about Jesus it is this: He was the most radical thinker this world has ever known. Throughout history millions have followed him but who of them has really understood him? Today’s text; “Offer the wicked man no resistance” is still not understood in our day because it is rarely practiced either in the world or by his followers because it is so hard. But the meaning behind this text perhaps could be partially summarized in the phrase what you resist persists…
George Buttrick, a Biblical scholar, says of “offer the wicked man no resistance”: “What does such teaching mean? Our imagination recoils from it, and our everyday morality (our speedy recourse to law, for instance and our ultimate dependence on force) flatly contradicts it. Christ has in mind the injured man. Such a person’s concern for justice is never pure; it is subtly entangled with vindictiveness. Christ warns them against that revenge. Revenge is not sweet despite the proverb: it is poison, strife breeding strife in endless circle…Do our law courts and jails really satisfy the oppressed, or reclaim the oppressor? How often they confirm the oppressor in guilt, leave the injured unrequited, and thus hurt everyone! The wrongdoer must be brought to truer personhood, and that change is not wrought by retaliation. Above all Christ has God’s will in mind: He intends that the world shall be a home in which children dwell in mutual love. He is not pleading for any cowardly yielding. The children of the Kingdom must show goodwill, with no other strategy and no other ulterior motive.”
When the King James Version came out this text was translated in this way: “Resist not evil.” It was very general and universal in application. For a long time in the Western world this text lived in these words. It was in this form that Laurens Van der Post, the South African author and filmmaker found it. For Laurens Van der Post human history is a progression on two levels: “A conscious and an unconscious, something that manifests and something that is latent or below the surface. What humans seem to do is flip back and forth between these two levels between our shadow side and the face we present to the world.” As Vander Post says, that is why all men tend to become what they oppose, why the New Testament exhorted us not to resist evil. We were not to resist evil, but to transform and redeem it, in case we become what we hate.
St. Paul in the letter to the Romans says: “Never repay evil with evil but let everyone see that you are interested only in the highest ideals… Overcome evil with good.” The Secret Team says, “The reason that what you resist persists is because if you are resisting something, you’re saying “No” I don’t want this thing because it makes me feel this way. So you’re putting out a really strong emotion of, “I really don’t like this feeling” and then it comes racing towards you.
Jack Canfield says: “The anti war movement creates more war. The anti drug movement has actually created more drugs. Mother Theresa was brilliant. She said, “I will never attend an anti war rally. If you have a peace rally, invite me.”
Hale Dwoskin says: “So if you are anti war, be pro peace instead. If you are anti hunger, be pro people having more than enough to eat. If you are anti a particular politician be pro his opponent. Often elections are tipped in favor of the person that the people are really against, because he is getting all the energy and all the focus.” In other words what we resist persists.
James Ray of the Secret Team says that he quit watching the news or reading the papers anymore because it didn’t make him feel good. He says that the media gives us what we want. The media is the effect and we are the cause. Ratings go up whenever there is a disaster so that means that the media will keep giving us bad news because that seems to be what we are asking for.
Michael Beckwith says: “Learn to become still and to take your attention away from what you don’t want, and all the emotional charge around it, and place the attention on what you wish to experience. Energy flows where attention goes.”
If the law of attraction exists as part of the collective unconscious, if the law of attraction is part of the quantum field where intentions make differences, if the human brain is a transmitter and our DNA is a receptor and our consciousness is part of the field of consciousness known as the world, if what we think about comes about, if what we sow we reap, if what goes around comes around, if what we focus on grows, if what we resist persists, then the way of the historical Jesus becomes the only way forward in the world. But his way is radical and transformative as well as very hard. Yet whenever it has been tried in the world it has been found to work; witness Gandhi in India, Desmond Tutu in South Africa, and Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States. All followed the teaching of Jesus to overcome evil with good. Why does that work? Because overcoming evil with good unleashes boundless creativity and vast moral force!
Now let’s consider what the world presently does with his teaching. We say that Christ’s teaching is only for personal relationships. And we can’t really live up to such high ideals. So we de facto reinterpret what Jesus says. We say in the real world that, “Blessed are the peacemakers” really means this: In personal relationships try to make peace. When it comes to the world however, we will have to defend ourselves with force. So it follows: Blessed are those who make defensive or preemptive war, they shall be called the sons of God. It follows that the proper response to the September 11th attack on America is “The war on Terror”.
Further, if a man takes you to court to sue you, sue him back until you have justice. If he was after your car, make sure that you teach him a lesson and take his car and his truck as well in a counter suit. If you are forced to go a mile out of your way, wait, what goes around comes around; there will be a time when you can demand the favor. Demand two miles to let that person know that they were out of line. If someone asks to borrow from you refuse him immediately. If you give him money you will create a dependency. When it comes to enemies we are permitted to fight them. It is quite okay to hate our enemies. God will fight on our side. We can never be perfect and we should not try to be. This is the Real Secret to the world. In this world you will always have trouble. Good luck to you! This world is corrupt and evil and you will just have to do the best you can in it. Heaven follows where the righteous will be rewarded and the wicked condemned to hell. Is that the Good News of Jesus? Would you follow such a Jesus?
Now for what Jesus really said: You have learnt how it was said: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But, I say unto you: offer the wicked man no resistance. On the contrary, if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other as well; if a man takes you to law and would have your tunic let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone orders you to go one mile, go two miles with him. Give to anyone who asks and if anyone wants to borrow do not turn away. You have learnt how it was said; you must love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say this to you; love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, in this way you will become sons and daughters of your Father who is in heaven, for he causes his sun to rise on bad men as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest people alike. For if you love those who love you what right have you to claim any credit?” Even the IRS does as much do they not? And if you save your greetings for your brothers and sisters are you doing anything exceptional? Even people who do not believe in God do that don’t they? You must be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
What we have here in Christ’s secret to the world!! It’s the real Secret. What we focus on grows. What we resist persists. So Blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called the children of God. Whatever we sow we reap, thus; happy are the merciful. They shall receive mercy, because they sowed mercy. The Secret to the world is the Kingdom of God. God’s will is to be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
Interviewed after the Second World War as to whether there would be a Third World War the great psychiatrist Jung said that he didn’t know, but that the only real danger that exists is man himself. “We are pitifully ignorant of the human psyche. We need to understand the psychology of human beings. We know so little.” But he said: “The great and only danger to the planet is mankind: we are the origin of all coming evil.” Jung is well known for his little phrase “What you resist persists.” Jung believed in the collective unconscious, that all human beings participated in a world consciousness in which they found themselves. This consciousness preceded their coming into the world and remained after they left the world. If Carl Jung is correct then the phrase “What we resist persists’ is all about the collective unconscious and its effects on the world.
Carl Jung also said: “What you want to change you must first accept. Condemnation does not liberate it oppresses.” He said that “the greatest most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.”
We live in a very troubled world. The Secret Team says that “our fighting everything we don’t like in the world is not working.” They say: “In our society we’ve become content with fighting against things, fighting against cancer, fighting against poverty, fighting against war, fighting against drugs, fighting against terrorism, fighting against violence. We tend to fight everything we don’t want, which actually creates more of a fight.”
This planet is a great place to live. There is only one problem and it is us. We are the greatest danger to the planet. Jung is right that we know pitifully little about the human psyche and that lack of knowledge could very well spell our doom. Humans do have a dark side. When we don’t deal with it, it erupts in violence, hatred, bigotry, mean spiritedness, torture, poverty, greed, anger, war and death.
Today the good news is that we live in unusual times. We are just beginning to understand the shadow side of the human psyche. We are just beginning to understand how the quantum field is affected by human intention. We have a window of opportunity at the moment. But if we carry on as we are doing in the world at present in the Middle East, In Iraq and Afghanistan, if we continue to explore for fossil fuels and do not commit to solar energy if we continue to spend billions on weapons of war and spend very little on peacemaking, the window will close fast. We spend billions on weapons of war; we spend very little on peacemaking. Our focus is pathetically wrong and so the world will end with a bang or series of bangs or just a whimper when it melts. How long will it be before Al Qaeda manages to obtain hand held nuclear weapons? Would they hesitate to use them? How long will it be before Global warming becomes runaway? But at present, we do have a window, so what do we do?
It is time for the children of the Kingdom to show good will with no other strategy and no other ulterior motive!
We must learn how to use the Secret. What we focus on grows so we need to focus our energy on trust, love, abundance, education and peace. When we vision the world as Christ did, when peace becomes our intention, the wolf will lie down with the lamb, A panther with a kid, Calf and lion cub feed together, with a little child to lead them, their young will lie down together. They will do no hurt, no harm. We will beat our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Nation’s shall not lift sword against nations. There will be no more training for war. Each person will sit under his vine and his fig tree with no one to trouble him. For the world will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord As the waters fill the sea. For the mouth of The Lord has spoken it.
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