Eternal Life

On Sunday I received an email from John, a man I do not know, saying that he had questions about our church. I responded telling him that I would gladly answer his questions to the best of my ability if he would reply with specifics. I have received similar emails and phone messages in the past from people interested in learning more about Unity and our teaching, mostly from those considering attending a service. I am always happy to provide any information I can. I soon learned through subsequent emails, however, that John was not at all interested in attending our church. He was, in essence, questioning how we could say that we are Christian and believe in the Bible, yet we do not teach that “Jesus Christ is the ONLY WAY to salvation.” He cited several Scripture verses to support his assertion.

In my reply I provided him with some resources he could access online to learn more about how we view the Bible, Jesus, sin, salvation, heaven and hell. I expressed to him that it was not my intention to attempt to convince him or anyone else that our interpretations are correct. I assured him that I respect his right to believe as he chooses. I also requested that he afford us the same courtesies and respect. In his reply, John indicated that we are free to believe what we want to believe as long as we know that we are in danger of Hell. He stressed that we are sinners and must accept that Jesus died on the cross to save us and was resurrected by God to prove his love for us.

Boy! That brought back some memories; most of them painful.

I have chosen, at this time, not to continue our correspondence. I don’t know that anything worthwhile would come from volleying emails with John. Having said that, I don’t see him as an adversary. I am choosing, instead, to believe that from his perspective he is reaching out in love and compassion to help us find what he believes is the path to salvation. He is concerned about our very souls. He is obviously passionate about his beliefs and his call to be a missionary for Christ in this way. There are times I wish I and others in Unity were as passionate about our positive spiritual message and our desire to share it with others.

John is obviously not alone in believing that we in Unity are not really Christian because we do not teach salvation through the blood sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus. John and those who share his beliefs are dismayed, at best, that we do not teach the doctrine of sin and salvation.

This was a timely exchange, and probably not coincidental, considering that this is Holy Week when we observe the events in the final week of Jesus’ physical life culminating in his crucifixion and resurrection. It makes sense to me that those who hold traditional Christian beliefs would question why we in Unity even bother to observe Easter. After all, Easter is the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. I’m sure they question why we celebrate the resurrection if we don’t believe in Jesus as “the ONLY WAY to salvation.”

I admit there was a time I wondered that as well. However, I have come to understand what I believe is the message of Easter from a Unity perspective. I am certainly not purporting to have THE right interpretation. As our cofounder, Charles Fillmore, so famously stated after expressing to a questioner what Unity believes, “I reserve the right to change my mind.” What follows is my current understanding.

We celebrate the resurrection because we believe that through the resurrection Jesus dramatically demonstrated the central message of Easter – Life is Eternal. Through the resurrection Jesus proved to his followers, all of us, that death is not real. Only Life is real and eternal. And, the Life that is real is the animating, vitalizing, energetic Essence that imbues all creation.

That which we call death is a name we assign to an experience that occurs at a particular point in time and space at which a transition takes place. In a person, this transition is a shift in the awareness of the individuated God-Essence from focus through a body back to a constant awareness of unity in God.

In Spirit, the concept of death is meaningless. Life, another name for ‘God’ does not die. It is constantly moving, expanding and evolving. What we think of as the body is a temporary vessel through which a specific individuated essence of Life/God expresses for a period of time. The essence of Life/God is never contained within a human body or any physical form. Life animates a body, but is never defined by it.

When we awaken to the reality of Eternal Life, the essential message of Easter, we are “saved.” We are saved from the “hell” that we create in our own minds because of the fear of death. We are free when we surrender to the Eternal Life that expresses in its fullness in every moment and trust that even though it may appear to us that something has died, that in truth it is only in a state of transition, whether it is the body, a relationship, a job, a hope or a dream.

Eternal Life expresses in its complete essence in every moment. The “Now” is the only moment in which Life can exist. If we are bound, in our minds, to the dream of a past or the hope of a future, we open ourselves to the suffering stimulated by our belief that something is absent from our lives now. This longing for a different past or attachment to a future dream is what the Buddha called “dukkha” and what we call “hell.” Both represent states of mind created by attachment to the things of the world. When we release our attachment we set ourselves free, thus we are “saved.”

Having been raised with a similar religious ideology as John's, the man who contacted me, I understand why he interprets Scripture to say that Jesus died and resurrected to save us from the eternal fires of hell. It is, after all, the message of traditional Christianity. But, we in Unity believe that Jesus’ true message was “follow me” not “worship me.”

We follow Jesus in the way of the crucifixion and resurrection every time we are willing to let go of pain and resentment of the past and our longing for a specific future, and instead surrender to the Eternal Life that is present in each moment. Each time we accept and allow the Life that is moving in us, through us, as us, and all creation in each and every moment, we are “saved,” and we are resurrected in the awareness of new life. That is the “salvation” promised by the crucifixion and the resurrection of our way shower Jesus.

I encourage us to allow today to be a day of “salvation” for us all. Let today be the day we free ourselves from the “hell” of our own making by surrendering to the Life that is the only enduring truth. Let us allow the pain and resentments from the past and attachments to a future to “die” away and welcome transformation.

On Sunday, as we observe Easter, let it be a day of celebration, not just in gratitude for our master teacher Jesus and his demonstrations, but for ourselves as well. Let us rise in the conscious awareness of Eternal Life as our very life. Accept the power of that Life expressing in and as every moment. Honor each moment as an opportunity to embrace our own resurrection and boldly declare, “Christ is risen. The awareness of Christ is risen indeed in my heart and mind. I am free.”

Please join us for our Easter celebration on Sunday at 10:00. It will be a celebrate with music from our own choir, Lauren Shealy, and a special solo from Rebecca Hyde. You won't want to miss it. My lesson is entitled "Rising in Love."