Towards the Truth

20
make a selection? If the Bible is the inspired word of God, i.e. of
an infallible God, it must and should mean just what it says. If one
part be allegorical, may not other parts be considered so? Are we
free to decide for ourselves which is the word of God most convenient
to us? As Bernard Shaw puts it in his Saint Joan:
joan: I hear voices telling me what to do. They come from
God.
robert: They come from your imagination.
joan: Of course. That is how the messages of God come to
us.
Religious inspiration is not essentially different from the inspiration
of an artist or an inventor. And we may say with Lin Yutang:
“Everything that we think God has in mind necessarily
proceeds from our own mind; it is what we imagine to
be in God’s mind.”
Christianity, like several other religions, has deified its teacher;
and Saint Paul was the founder of that cult. But did not Jesus claim
for himself divine sonship?
Our position should be made very clear here. One may and
must have a very high esteem for the person of Jesus, a personality
of such outstanding virtues as are rarely met with in this world. One
should also have a very high esteem for his noble doctrine. But one
should not put words in his holy mouth. He never intended to say
nor explain his words to suit us. His teaching is extremely simple;
and that is its beauty and attraction; yet it fails to be original and
typical. Jesus did not mean to be original; he did not come to abolish
the law of Moses, and so he borrows a whole ready-made theology,
the monotheism of the Hebrews. His was a moral code without
rituals. He worked for the spiritual upliftment of his people, and
without being a philosopher, he loved the depressed classes. Just