Ensayo 7 Dos Martín Lutero, dos tipos de fe

“Por la fe que miente de este lado de hacer el trabajo, no daría un higo. Si no fuera por la fe que está al otro lado de hacer el trabajo, daría mi vida”.

I was raised in the Lutheran faith in a small city in Northern Wisconsin. This region was populated by settlers from such diverse areas as Norway, Sweden and Germany. So we had more than our fair share of blond people.

By the time I arrived on the scene in the early 1960s, we were basically all just a bunch of white people with interesting foods to eat during the holidays.

When I was twenty-five, I moved to Atlanta where I would settle down for the next twenty-five years. Not long after arriving in Atlanta, my parents came for a visit, and we attended a church service at Ebenezer Baptist church.

My mother had long been the organist at our Lutheran church in Rice Lake, and my dad taught vocal music at the University of Wisconsin two-year college in Barron County. So they were both particularly keen to experience the music, and we were not disappointed.

Si mal no recuerdo, éramos los únicos blancos que asistíamos al servicio ese día, y la congregación nos recibió con gran amabilidad. La hija del Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pronunció el sermón, y después esperamos un rato a que las grabaciones del servicio estuvieran disponibles en CD. Mi padre las usaría más tarde en una de sus clases de música en la universidad.

This came to mind recently when my mom sent me a clipping about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from her daily devotional book. It clarified something that had always confused me: why did Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Martin Luther, the founder of the Lutheran religion, have such similar names?

Según el recorte de prensa, esta es la explicación: “El Dr. Michael King Sr., un destacado predicador de Atlanta, realizó una gira por Tierra Santa y Berlín en 1934, patrocinada por su iglesia, la Iglesia Bautista Ebenezer. En Alemania, Hitler estaba en el poder y la iglesia del Dr. King se opuso a él.

El Dr. King se sintió profundamente conmovido por su visita a la tierra de Martín Lutero y por la proclamación del reformador de la salvación solo por gracia a través de la fe solo en las Escrituras. Cuando llegó a casa, King cambió su nombre de Michael a Martin Luther.

Su hijo mayor, Michael, tenía cinco años. Su padre también cambió el nombre de su hijo, a Martin Luther King Jr. "

Primero creemos

I am struck by the reference to the Lutheran tenet that faith alone will save us. I imagine that both Dr. King and Dr. Luther understood the deep, unshakable truth behind this. But I am guessing that for some people today, the real understanding has gotten lost.

Esto me recuerda una cita del juez de la Corte Suprema Oliver Wendell Holmes: "Por la simplicidad que se encuentra a este lado de la complejidad, me da igual, pero por la simplicidad que se encuentra al otro lado de la complejidad, daría mi vida".

In this case, simplicity is faith, and complexity lies in doing the work of healing. In other words, “For the faith that lies this side of doing the work, I would not give a fig, but for the faith that lies on the otros side of doing the work, I would give my life.”

That far faith is true faith. Discovering it is what life is all about.

To go on a healing journey is to remove the obstacles that are blocking our inner light. Keep in mind what Christ taught, which is that heaven is within.

Before we can embark on such a journey, we can only believe with our ego mind. But belief as a mental concept has limited spiritual value.

It’s hardly worth a fig.

The ego is a shallow resource. It does not have the ability to comprehend the whole truth.

El ego, de hecho, está atrapado para siempre en la dualidad, no muy diferente de los fragmentos de nosotros mismos atrapados en la conciencia infantil. El ego, entonces, sólo puede contener la mitad de una verdad total. Pero en el centro de nuestras almas, donde estamos en unidad, tenemos todos los aspectos de la verdad. Lo que significa que nuestro Ser Superior se siente cómodo sosteniendo opuestos.

For many people, including many who are deeply religious, having faith and doing the work of inner healing are opposites they can’t reconcile. Left to choose, the ego opts for “faith”—as a mental construct that’s easy to come by—and rejects the notion we must do any work to have it.

But ego-level “faith” is a flimsy, lightweight boat that’s not worth a fig in the great waves of life.

Entonces sabremos

El devocional diario continúa diciendo: “Hoy recordamos al fundador de nuestra iglesia, el Dr. Martín Lutero (fallecido el 18 de febrero de 1546), su fe en el Evangelio y su declaración del don gratuito de la salvación que nos ha sido dada indignamente. pecadores, por la gracia de Dios.”

As the Pathwork Guide teaches, Christ did indeed come to Earth in the form of a man named Jesus. His mission was to open the door for todos nosotros to get back to heaven. That was essentially a free gift.

But salvation, that we must work for.

As the Guide clearly stated, “If you do not meet that in you which freezes and paralyzes the living spirit, it is impossible to be moved and lived by the living spirit.”

We simply cannot transcend duality while living from our ego. To transcend duality, we must discover the living spirit at our core. Then our ego must surrender and learn to live from there.

Only then can we have a deep inner knowing of the truth, including the truth about how worthy we each are.

That’s how we save ourselves.

We save ourselves by finding our deeper true selves, for that is where we find heaven.

Las verdades a medias no nos llevan a ninguna parte

If we look around, we see that Christianity is in a state of decline. Lutherans are no longer filling the pews. To understand this, we can turn to the Pathwork Guide’s teaching about the three principles of evil, one of which is confusion.

Few things confuse us more than half-truths.

More than that, when something is not fully in truth—when we embrace only half of a truth and reject the opposite half—it can’t keep growing. For all untruth equates to negativity, and all negativity eventually brings things to a halt.

In the case of Christians, many embrace the need to have faith, welcoming the idea of Christ into their hearts. But then they fall short in clearing away whatever is blocking that light.

There is recognition that we have sinned—none of us are perfect—and that we feel unworthy. These things are true. But that is not the truth of who we are.

In truth, we are each worthy, because at our core, we are light.

Nuestro trabajo consiste en utilizar nuestro libre albedrío para encontrar y liberar esa luz.

We had the right idea when we sang in Sunday school: Esta pequeña luz mía, la dejaré brillar. But the follow-through wasn’t there the rest of the week. People started to see the hypocrisy that resulted. Worse, many people—myself included—were affected by various kinds of abuse that festered in the unhealed darkness.

Many today are turning away from church altogether and gravitating to spiritual paths that face into what’s not aligned with the light. This is the growing “spiritual but not religious” group. Or at least that’s the concept.

Durante un tiempo, aprovechando esta tendencia —quizás incluso contribuyendo a crearla—, las comunidades de Pathwork prosperaron en muchas regiones del país. Se realizó un importante trabajo de sanación a medida que las personas se esforzaban por transformar su yo inferior.

Entonces la ola comenzó a retroceder.

Why did that happen? No one knows for sure.

But many who were drawn to Pathwork had strong negative feelings about the Christian church. To avoid offending anyone—to keep people from leaving Pathwork—the topic of Christ was rarely mentioned.

Seldom, in my decades of Pathwork experience, was it acknowledged that the whole point of all this inner cleaning is to live in a clean house—a house that Christ built.

Dejando que la luz de Cristo brille

The Guide teaches that transforming our Lower Self is always an act of our Higher Self. It is our inner light that inspires us to become better. It is our own faith that there could be more to life that compels us to search for deeper meaning.

In the end, it will be our willingness to take self-responsibility for what disconnects us from our own core that will bring us home to God.

Christ is going to come again, but not as a person. The next time Christ comes it will be through each one of us when we do the necessary work of clearing away our negativity and calling forth our inner light.

When we do that, we will learn how to live together in harmony and in true faith.

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