32. Wrong Paths
With few exceptions, people are in gross and for them very fatal error!
God does not need to run after them and ask them to believe in His existence. Nor are His servants sent to constantly exhort them not to abandon Him. That would be ridiculous. It is a devaluation and degradation of the sublime Godhead to think and expect such things. This erroneous view does great harm. It is nourished by the behaviour of many really serious pastors who, in actual love for God and people, try again and again to convert people who are only turned to earthly things, to convince them and win them over to the Church. All this only contributes to increasing man’s already enough existing conceit of his importance beyond measure, and in the end really drives many into the delusion that they have to be asked to do good. This also brings about the strange attitude of the greatest number of all “believers”, who are much more likely to be deterrents than role models. Thousands upon thousands feel a certain satisfaction, an exaltation, in the knowledge that they believe in God, that they perform their prayers with the earnestness they must muster, and that they do not deliberately harm their neighbours.
In this inner “being exalted” they feel a certain retribution of good, a gratitude to God for their docility, they feel a bond with God, whom they also sometimes think of with a certain holy shudder, which triggers or leaves behind a feeling of bliss which they enjoy with happiness.
But these multitudes of believers go wrong. They live happily in a delusion of their own making, which makes them unconsciously count themselves among those Pharisees who make their little sacrifices with the real but false feeling of thanksgiving: “Lord, I thank thee that I am not as they are.” This is not spoken, nor is it thought in reality, but the “lifting feeling” within is nothing more than this unconscious prayer of thanksgiving, which even Christ already proved to be false.
In these cases, the inner “exalted state” is nothing more than the triggering of a self-satisfaction produced by prayer or intentionally good thoughts. Those who call themselves humble are usually very far from being humble in reality! It often requires much effort to talk to such believers. In such a condition they will never attain the blessedness they think they already have! They should be careful not to get completely lost in their spiritual arrogance, which they think is humility. Many of those who are still completely unbelieving will find it easier to enter the Kingdom of God than all the multitudes with their conceited humility, who in reality do not simply come before God asking but indirectly demanding that He reward them for their prayers and pious words. Their requests are demands, their nature hypocrisy. They will be blown away from His face like empty chaff. They will certainly be rewarded, only differently than they think. They have already satiated themselves enough on earth in the consciousness of their own worth.
The feeling of well-being soon fades with the passing into the Ethereal World, where the inner intuition, barely imagined here, emerges, while the feeling previously produced mainly only by thought, fades into nothingness.
The inner, silent, so-called humble expectation of something better is in reality nothing more than a demand, no matter how beautifully it is expressed. But every demand is presumptuous. God alone has to demand! Christ did not come to the people with His message asking, but warning and demanding. He gave explanations about the Truth, but did not lure the listeners with rewards to spur them on to become better. He calmly and sternly commanded the earnest seekers: “Go and act accordingly!”
Demanding, God stands before humanity, not enticing and asking, not lamenting and mourning. Calmly He will leave all the bad, even all the wavering, to the darkness, in order to no longer expose those who are striving upwards to the attacks and to let the others thoroughly experience everything that they consider right, so that they come to the realization of their error!
