“Our
challenge to Christianity has been primarily that it has abstracted
the divine element from man's nature and externalized it, leaving him
nothing but his grosser self. Christianity's failure to transform man
for the better stems largely from this mistake.
“We
have said that when it allocated to Jesus alone the divinity that was
the heritage of all, Christianity dismembered integral man. Deprived
of the power to redeem himself, man was left to grovel, ashamed and
afraid to stand on his own feet and demand his birthright as heir to
the kingdom of blessedness. He thus abrogated his title to Sonship of
the Father and joint heir of his omnipotence. This reduced man to to
the level of pitiful supplicant. Under such an influence, people
enter the race of life without self-confidence, and so are defeated
from the start...European man lived deprived of any sense of the
value of his intrinsic self until the fourteenth-century Renaissance
rediscovered and reaffirmed his innate ability and resources...
“No
one will question that the struggle of the soul with its polarized
opposite is a strenuous ordeal, often tragic and crucial. But, in the
long run, this struggle is salutary, for it strengthens the soul's
capacity to come to grips with life in action. Without temptation,
without the long fight, there is no victory...
“Man
must learn a balanced, sane, and happy integration of soul and body,
if he is to lead the good life on earth intended for him. The
attribution of evil to the sensual side of human nature has not been
fully considered by Christian thinkers in the light of the damage it
can cause to the psychic life. Yet it should be obvious that if human
consciousness is taught to look with contempt and revulsion upon the
instrument through which it has access and relation to life, the
result must be injurious feelings of guilt and resentment...To laud
spirit alone and condemn matter is to render the spirit impotent in
action and to condemn man to self-deprecation, doubt, and fear. Such
a position saps the will to joy, to adventure, to victory.” – A
REBIRTH FOR CHRISTIANITY, “Death Throes and Birth Pangs,” by
Alvin Boyd Kuhn (2004), pp.239-241.
