Monsignor Benson debunks orthodox Christian beliefs on salvation.
‘Jesus, the great teacher who was born upon earth two thousand years ago, was cast out of the earth world violently and shamefully by the people of earth. This tragic transition was an act of expiation to the Eternal Father for the wrath He felt and as a means of saving the earth world’s inhabitants’. So it is still taught in the churches of earth. A blood sacrifice of His only son! Such beliefs as these are primitive and barbaric, and monstrous when viewed in the light of the great truths of the spirit world as we know and understand them here.
To teach that one great soul should suffer all the torments of persecution and a horrible ‘death’ in order to save the world from ‘damnation,’ and to teach same that this same tragedy should be demanded by the Father of Heaven to appease His wrath, is not only revolting in itself to us here in the spirit world, but it is far, far worse, is the grossest libel, the greatest defamation—to put it at its very least—that could ever be contemplated upon the character and nature and the very essence of the Great Father of the universe.
Is it to be wondered at when folk say that they do not know how to love God as they are taught to do by their religious instructors, when they are told that God, the Father, demanded not only a blood sacrifice, but that the sacrificial victim should be His only son. Could this be a God of love is a question that would spring to the mind of any normally constituted person.
The maintenance of such a doctrine as that God demanded a blood sacrifice of his son is to impute the most horrible and diabolical qualities to the Father of the universe. This sacrifice, ecclesiastics will tell you, was necessary for the remission of the sins of the people on earth. God demanded it, it will be affirmed. That is pure paganism—and without a vestige of truth behind it.
We are each responsible for our own sins. We must pay the penalty ourselves for any transgressions of spiritual laws; no one can do that for us. Thus is true justice administered throughout the spirit world to all alike, impartially, infallibly, and exactly. Man is his own ‘redeemer’. He always has been and he always will be. We cannot shift on to other shoulders the weight which we must carry ourselves. Orthodoxy lays enormous stress upon the ‘body and blood’ of Jesus. What spiritual significance do they bear? The answer is none.
No person or persons can assign to a single soul any other place in the spirit world than that which that soul has merited for himself. He cannot be saved through the intermediation of another, whoever that other may be.
It is plain, therefore, as the noonday sun—and I speak from exact experience—that the tragedy that took place at Calvary nigh upon two thousand years ago, although a personal sacrifice of sublime beauty, yet that tragedy does not and cannot have any bearing upon the individual souls who have been born upon earth since that time, or who were born at that time or before it.
It is against every law of the spirit world that one person can assume responsibility for another’s wrong doing. There are no merits belonging to another person of which we can avail ourselves and by which we can evade our responsibilities. But, it will be said, this great soul who perished so tragically is different. He is one apart. He is Divine. He is the Son of God come down to earth to redeem us. He is, in fact, God Himself. With God all things are possible. Therefore, by virtue of his Divinity, Jesus will wash away our sins if we have sufficient faith and do what the Church teaches. We must be repentant, of course, and being repentant, we have one who will plead our cause by the merits of his supreme sacrifice we shall he saved. That is a very comforting and comfortable thought belief, but there is just one flaw. It simply is not true.
We reverence the Father of the universe without the necessity of being cajoled into it or threatened with dire penalties if we do not cultivate it The Father cannot be offended. He has no forgiveness to give. He does not condemn; He does not punish, nor does He relegate to others either the power or the right to punish.
Every man is his own saviour. Salvation is by personal effort alone. I am using the word salvation, not in its theological sense, but in the sense that a person must carve out his own spiritual destiny, though he will always be under the care and guidance of wiser spiritual beings. When the atheist arrives in the spirit world he receives a shock, but his shock is, in many respects and upon many occasions, no worse, frequently less, than that experienced by many a cleric, for, from the spiritual standpoint, to believe in no God is no worse than to believe in the strange God of Orthodoxy.
When the atheist finds himself in these lands, he discovers also that he has made a tremendous and vital mistake. The existence of the Father needs no proof in these realms. The fact is evident upon every hand in an immense variety of ways. The atheist does not require convincing. No lengthy or profound arguments are necessary. He convinces himself, and most frequently in the shortest space of time, that there exists not only a God, but that same God is the Father of us all.
As to the 'saving' power of Jesus, the elementary, crude effusions both of pulpit and prayer-book, as well as of that heterodox individual, the 'revivalist', have taught people to believe that they have only to throw themselves before Jesus to be 'saved' forever from the torments of hell. The Church has much to answer for, but never so much as in this spurious doctrine of the deity of Jesus’.
Christians gain much comfort from their belief that their faith will grant them eternal salvation as a consequence of the sacrifice made by Jesus on the cross. However, as Monsignor Benson makes clear this belief is wholly delusional, since ‘every man is his own saviour and that salvation is by personal effort alone’.
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