Spencer Heath Archive

Item 372

Three pages typed transcription by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath.

To be published as an essay in Economics and the Spiritual Life of Free Men.

No date

 

 

MEN CAN ONLY EMULATE THE WAY OF GOD — NOT THE NATURE AND BEING OF GOD.

The cause of so much conflict and controversy about religion is that the Church places its major stress almost entirely on being instead of doing. It is another case of that bastard verb, to be, which attempts to read static significance into the dynamic cosmos. It is ontology versus technology — what God is, thinks or believes versus what God does. This, applied to the human entity, stresses what man is, thinks or believes versus what man does. The true God is a God of doing, not of being, and the true nature of man resides in what he does, not in what he is. The usual order must be reversed. We must learn what God is from what God does, and what man is from what man does. This is one of the senses in which man is divine. For, just as God is self-creating through what He does, so man creates himself quantitatively by what he does, qualitatively by the manner of his doing it. So far as he acts as God acts, he is creative; he is no longer creature, but creator. Thus he takes on his divinity.

      The general statement is, man has no being as such, but as he acts; that establishes his being. So far as he acts like an animal, that establishes his animal being. So far as he acts divinely, creatively, such action establishes him as a spiritual being.

      Theology lays great stress on the nature and being of God. This is not anything that can be emulated by man, but it is a fertile field for controversy and in which to justify the exercise of authority by men over their fellow men. It involves no technology whereby all men can serve instead of govern other men.

      Science takes little account of God as being, and gives all its attention to His works and to how His works proceed rather than to what they are. In the natural sciences, men discover the ways of God and therein the mind of God — the divinity in its procedural aspect. Without knowing it, science worships God in His procedural aspect, that of the Holy Ghost, and not in His aspect as Substance or Power, not in His materialistic nature, not as ruler over men.

      Learning the mind of God as manifested in the works of God, the rational mind of man becomes at one with the rational mind of God. He thus has knowledge of God’s works and ways, and this knowledge is power, for it is the power to create as God creates — to bring about events and actions in the manner that God acts. By this technology, the creative man — the spiritual man — enters into and plays his part in the continuing drama whose first act is described in the Book of Genesis.

      By this scientific technology, man has the technical knowledge whereby to continue the creation of the material world into an ever finer habitation for the spirit of man. All that is lacking is the same kind of knowledge of the mind of God as manifested in the free and voluntary relationships, the cooperative processes of men in relation to other men. When this knowledge is achieved, men will have the same spiritual power, the same creative power, in the social (non-political) world that they have already achieved with respect to their material world. It is only necessary to learn how God wishes men to act with respect to other men. The injunction is simple and plain:  “Do unto others in the manner ye would have them do unto you.” This means that men shall turn away from political relationships — away from the iron rule as between man and man and act upon the golden rule, the only rule of conduct divinely prescribed.

      This golden rule has endowed modern men with an abundance of life as compared with men of old. It only remains to carry this golden rule procedure into the field of common or community services. The present administration of public services and properties by non-owners and by the iron methods of government and war is the Achilles heel of the Western World. A rational understanding of the mind and will of God as manifested in the contractual relationships among men will give modern men the creative technology wherewith to build a spiritual commonwealth in this now divided world.

      AMEN