A Call to a Greater Perspective Encompassing All Faiths

“Here a Christian must become a Christian with a Greater Community awareness. A Muslim becomes a Muslim with a Greater Community awareness. A Buddhist and a Jew gain a greater panorama of life to which their religious teachings must become relevant. If religion in the world is to educate and to enlighten, it must have this greater capacity and awareness.”–Entering the Greater Community

The preceding quotation is from a work among the most recent in all of the extensive* material of the New Message from God. The New Message from God calls upon all religious throughout the world to see that “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.” There are many people of faith in the world who seek the authentic reality, who are aware and alert. But who among them has grasped what will be the most decisive challenge the human race has ever faced, this entry into the Greater Community of intelligent life in the universe?

That is why the New Message from God has come, to alert the people of Earth to a great shift in power that is happening in the world today. 

The following quotations are all from a single teaching, Chapter 26 of Greater Community Spirituality,  Who is Jesus?, received by Marshall Vian Summers 22 years ago. The New Message from God does not aim to replace the great religious traditions of the world but seeks to reorient them to the greater reality beyond our small but beautiful planet.

“Religion must serve the world in its current state of evolution.” 

The great contributions of world religions to human development are acknowledged:

“The world’s major religions have all evolved the race towards a greater interaction between different peoples. This is especially true of Christianity, which has spanned your globe and now connects people who may otherwise have no association with one another. Now they have a common faith. Now they have common rituals and common observances. This is a remarkable accomplishment in a world that is still deeply mired in tribal identities.”

While the world’s great religions have done much to civilize the human race, by fostering cross-cultural communication, as well as the desire to connect across ancient divisions of race and locale, they are rooted in past revelations, pre-Copernican in outlook regarding God and creation.

“Christianity is a religion for humanity with a human god and a human emphasis. It cannot account for life in the Greater Community. In order for this to happen, its theology will have to change and expand. Its idea of the Divine will have to change and expand. Its notion of God’s involvement in the world will have to grow enormously. Its teachings will have to be separated from the folklore of the past. Its theology and application will have to change and adapt. If it cannot do this, it will die. No matter how virulent its defenders will be and no matter how strong its seeming resurgence, it will be overtaken by the reality of a changing world.”

Anthropomorphic tendencies in religious concepts persist even today in some of the world’s major religions. These tendencies produce a false dichotomy, a division among people who believe and those who cannot reduce God to a mere agent rather than that which is everything and more. 

It is a false dichotomy because, again, ”We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”; deep down, all people must recognize their ideas about God having human attributes are largely projections. Comforting projections they are, some of them taking on a life of their own, projections that take on the power of myth and meaning, with a great deal of confusion of levels (magical thinking that imposes spiritual agency to material effect).

 

“Even Christianity must now evolve to meet a whole new set of circumstances. Resistance to Greater Community awareness in the world today is primarily centered in the world’s religions. These are religions for man. They are human religions with a human god and a human emphasis. They do not account for life in the Greater Community. Yet the reality of life in the Greater Community will challenge their precepts and will challenge the institutions that have been built upon these precepts.”

The spiritual agency that is at work in the universe is yet quite mysterious to our human perspective; the beauty within all religions of the world is the attempt to convey the Mystery. A great clarification is called for, to remedy the misunderstandings that have accrued. This is not just a matter for theologians and philosophers: all people must awaken from their dream of a spiritual rescue from a material reality. Christianity is not the only source of a lot of magical thinking; the problem of over-spiritualizing to avoid responsibility is a common problem for many.

“Though Jesus has established a foundation here, even Christianity must now evolve to meet a whole new set of circumstances… An old Christianity cannot meet a new set of circumstances. It must be a new Christianity, a Christianity that is renewing itself continuously.”

Christianity has been and will adapt, because it must, and other world traditions as well as they shift to a Greater Community perspective and from backward to forward thinking.

“An old Christianity cannot meet a new set of circumstances. It must be a new Christianity, a Christianity that is renewing itself continuously— just as within the life and scope of a person’s experience, an old orientation cannot meet a new problem, an old belief cannot meet a new set of circumstances and an old identity cannot interact with a new identity.”

Many people in the world sense the need for a new revelation. Together we will refresh the old myths with new understanding, assisted by divine agency being demonstrated in the world today through the process of Revelation.

Source: http://www.newmessage.org/wiki/Christianity#Christianity_and_spiritual_evolution

*Mr. Summers professes that he receives this material in a flowing stream, an experience where his voice joins with a greater Voice to form these pronouncements. Their collective speech is recorded and transcribed, virtually verbatim, and has flowed at a prodigious rate–at more than 9000 pages over the past 3 decades, at the same time disseminating the material worldwide, now in 23 languages. Hear the Voice of Revelation at NewMessage.org