OCR Text |
Show Quality of Kindliness the Nucleus of Christianity as Its Founder Taught By DEAN SHALLER MATHEWS, University of Chicago. Eeligion is a simple thing. The paradoxical thing about it is that one need not understand it in order to have it. Its badge and embodiment embodi-ment are kindliness: it is kindliness which Christ lived and taught. That one quality alone comprises the nucleus of Christianity. If you achieve that relationship with Clod which will show you to be kindly the rest matters little. Of course doctrines are inevitable. We will have almost as many interpretations of religious experience as there are people. But the important im-portant matter is not that a man or woman take any particular doctrine or interpretation as his or her own, but that he or she find, in some form, real, deep, satisfying religious experience. You don't need to know the intricate ramifications of metaphysics, with their ontology and cosmography cos-mography and cosmogony. One teacher emphasizes forms, another extols devout prayer, another contemplation. But none of these can be roligion to all men. Only kindliness is the universal stamp of religion. The formalist's conception of reli gion is as far from the life-guiding, personal experience and emotion of real religion as the charts in a cook book are from the realities of our digestive processes. Religion to be made intelligible has to be a religion which men can put into practice in their lives. It is a way of living. |