The best of Jews or Muslims are, perforce, the worst of Christians; a devout Catholic is necessarily a terrible Protestant, a Buddhist has reservations about the teachings of Hinduism... the Spiritist condemns what is not Spiritism... and so on, always the same petty feeling of rivalry in all religions... for my religion is always, always better than that of others.
Leo Tolstoy, this sincere disciple of Jesus, was excommunicated
by his church in the name of that same Jesus! Mahatma Gandhi, this genuine
Christian from India, was not considered a Christian by Christian churches in
the West. Albert Schweitzer, a distinguished exponent of mystic-dynamic
Christianity, was not allowed by the Evangelical Missionary Society of Paris to
work as a doctor and surgeon in French Equatorial Africa in the village of
Lambaréné, in today's Gabon!
However, despite regrets, we do not deny that ecclesiastical societies are, to a certain extent, necessary - perhaps a “necessary evil” - just like the crutches of a crippled person. The masses are not in a position to conduct themselves; they have to be conducted and to be conducted, there needs to be a conductor. The error of religious sects is not that they lead or seek to lead; some of them are presenting themselves in public as being Christianity itself in all its purity and integrity. There are even churches claiming to have a monopoly on the truth and holiness of Christianity, for clerical selfishness can come to such an absurd extent!
All churches, while sincere, are evolutionary stages towards Christianity, but none of them is genuine Christianity, which will never fit in any legal or theological formulas. Bottled light is not light! Canned life is not life! Spirit stamped is not a spirit! In the direct reason that Christianity becomes bureaucratic, it falsifies itself, shrinks, decomposes.
To the extent that man experiences within himself the kingdom of God, he transcends the theological boundaries of his church, without thereby harassing this society which served as a means of spiritual evolution. The adolescent has surpassed his childhood but does not hate it; the mature man abandons adolescence, as he left childhood, which was a necessary stage to reach the heights of his adulthood.
The butterfly breaks the silken threads of the silkworm’s cocoon, not because it hates this work of art produced by itself, but because according to eternal laws, the time had come when the cocoon, which served as protection in a certain evolutionary period, becomes an obstacle in the new stage of its ascensional evolution; therefore, what was necessary and sacred to it yesterday would today be superfluous and harmful.
The Christian who wants to evolve his believes does well to assert his “sectarian cocoon”, while the latter provides with the service it must render but must possess the necessary independence and freedom of spirit to steadily and serenely surmount any evolutionary stage in the day and hour when yesterday's assistance will become a hindrance to today or tomorrow.
What is more important is that man be fully honest with himself...
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