Hi Friends,
The purpose of this post is to raise up Lowell Fillmore’s challenging question, Will you help to restore peace?, published in Weekly Unity sometime in the 1950s, after the Soviets developed their nuclear weapon capability, and to highlight two important points he makes about how to achieve world peace.
I also want to invite those who can come to Baltimore on April 20, 2023 to join us at Koinonia—A Day of Peaceful Living, which is now open for registration.
Lowell’s first point is subtle, but clear: there exists a “world of man” and “God’s perfect spiritual creation.” These are distinct realities. They are not states of consciousness. Our state of consciousness, both high and low, is our awareness of these realities, but it is not reality itself.
Consciousness changes all the time, but what we know as the kingdom of heaven, which Lowell’s father called the Fourth Dimension, and which might be what we often call today a parallel universe, is and always has been a present reality. It is here, now. As Lowell’s first affirmation states: “The world which God created in the beginning was a good, harmonious world, and it is still a good, harmonious world, and it will always be a good, harmonious world.”
Lowell’s second point is that world peace is not achieved by a shift to higher consciousness. Rather it is achieved by the active engagement of a benevolent God who wants to bring the kingdom of heaven, the fourth dimensional world, into the “world of man.”
What we do accomplish by our shift to higher consciousness is assist in God’s intervention. God does the work. As Lowell’s second affirmation states: “The Spirit of truth is now revealing this perfect world to me, and God is helping me to reveal its true character to many people. I agree with God’s ideal, good creation and I am working with Him with all my heart, soul, and strength to bring His world into manifestation here and now.”
Why is this important? This is important because we in Unity have placed far too much power in states of consciousness. States of consciousness are important, as we have learned from the hierarchy of human development taught by Abraham Maslow and Claire Graves and popularized by Don Beck as Spiral Dynamics. But the kingdom of heaven is much more, as Lowell Fillmore asserts here. And raising consciousness has not—by itself—raised our external reality to a state of world peace.
Lowell Fillmore and other metaphysical Christians call upon an intervention into world affairs the power of an external reality most people know as God. Lowell is theistic: “belief in the existence of a god or gods, especially belief in one god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures.”
What Unity has got right is its emphasis on metaphysics, which traditional Christianity lacks. The thoughts of our mind do matter, and raising consciousness is the gateway for achieving world peace. But there is a great difference between Christian metaphysics as we see here in Lowell Fillmore’s message and the non-theistic metaphysics that prevails in much of New Thought.
Christian metaphysics offers a supernatural meta-narrative of a benevolent God sending forth Divine Ideas into our human reality, accessible to those with higher consciousness. God may not change things in my bank account, but God will change things around in my thinking, according to Lowell Fillmore.
But non-theistic metaphysics offers a God-Mind supplanted by human-mind. The God meta-narrative is reduced to a psychological exploration of “our divinity.” “Divine ideas” are just that—ideas—and all the human mind can do is use them in shoving things around for satisfying human needs. There is perhaps no better argument for abandoning godless metaphysics today than the tragedy of climate change and world war. We have been shoving things around in our world far too long.
It is time to return to the Fillmore teachings.
Sunday, February 26, 2023
Listen/Download Audio of Mark’s message
Listen/Download Audio of Will You Help to Restore Peace?
PEACE AND harmony were a part of God’s original creation, for He did not create war or inharmony. These conditions exist only in the world of man. They cannot exist in God’s perfect spiritual creation.
War on earth is the result of man’s wrong thinking. Wrong thinking is the result of man’s failure to realize his unity with God. Because he has not lived close to God’s love and wisdom he has lapsed into fear, greed, hatred, and misunderstanding. As a man finds his unity with his Father, God, his inharmonious states of mind vanish. As he cultivates faith in God’s goodness and love he automatically corrects his habits of wrong thinking and acting.
Since war is caused only by the thoughts in the minds of men, war can be eliminated only by a change in men’s thoughts. This means bringing the thoughts of each individual back to God’s way of thinking. Passing laws, building up armies, exploding atom bombs—nothing in the outer world can correct man’s erroneous way of thinking, or stop war.
God’s goodness and love and power are the only realities. These must be fully realized and incorporated into the minds of all men. Men must have the mind in them that was in Christ Jesus.
If men will erase wrong thinking from their minds and turn their attention toward God’s real universe, the universe of spirit, they can redeem the race from its bondage to the adverse appearances of the world, and they will then be free to enjoy the beauty of the realities of creation.
We are confused by many things about us that seem distorted to us because of our lack of clear spiritual vision. But when we clarify it and remember that God made all things good and that He is always with us we begin to see a better world about us. It becomes beautiful and harmonious and the people in it more loving and co-operative. As we clarify our vision we find that the kingdom of heaven is indeed at hand. The whole world may seem to others to be in an uproar, but when we realize our oneness with God it is not so to us. When we unify ourselves with God and let Him direct our way we walk in paths of peace and righteousness, we live in the good world that He has created. The storms of adversity that roar in the average man’s world cannot disturb us, because we live in God’s world, and these storms are not a part of it.
After thousands of years man is slowly growing up spiritually and is gradually learning to understand that he is not merely flesh but spirit also, a son of God and joint heir with Jesus Christ. When he is able to realize and understand the full meaning of this mighty truth he will not depart from his Father’s house again, to dwell in a land of woe and strife.
When a man finds God within him by first finding his own Christ nature he no longer needs to fight evil. Man has been learning the hard way, by experience. So far he does not seem to have profited much by His hard experiences. Now is a good time for him to turn over a new leaf and stop searching in the wrong places for the answer to his needs. Let him now turn directly to the source of his life and existence and find the answer to all his questions in God, who will meet him more than halfway.
One man searching for God will find Him, but when a number of men join together in searching for Him they exert a tremendous power for good in behalf of the whole race. Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” A few persons with faith in God can generate power enough to help many others to come into and enjoy God’s kingdom.
However to inspire the more than two billion people who live in the world with the power of God’s loving helpfulness will require many times two or three working together in the name of Christ. There must be a definite and consecrated effort by a large number of enthusiastic, spiritually enlightened men and women if the world is to be freed from its ignorant, inharmonious thoughts and its people directed into a loving, powerful faith in the true good world inhabited by good people that God created.
Men come to resemble what they believe in. Every man must learn to believe in his loving Father and to unify himself with the Father by loving Him with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength.
The question is raised in the 32d chapter of Deuteronomy as to how it is possible for one righteous man to “chase” a thousand and two righteous men to put ten thousand to flight. The answer is that it is possible because God can help the righteous men. With God’s help, two righteous men can overcome ten thousand, and two affirmations of Truth can put ten thousand untrue statements to flight. God and Truth are the greatest powers in the universe.
Surely if two righteous men can overcome ten thousand, two hundred can overcome one million, and two hundred thousand can overcome one billion. This is nearly half of the total population of the world. No doubt a sufficient number of consecrated persons could be found among our readers to overcome the world of negative thoughts. Just think, a half million Truth students joining together in a realization of God’s Truth in an endeavor to help the whole-world overcome its wrong ideas about man and God and thus do away with strife, poverty, and sickness! This is a goal worth while.
Every man’s wrong thoughts are his worst enemy, and Christ within him is his best friend, because Christ is the true Son of God, who can save every man, woman, and child from his wrong thinking. This Christ has been crucified by sin and neglect and is buried in material thoughts in nearly every man in the world. He must be resurrected in every person so that all people will know of a certainty that they are all brothers and sisters made in the image and likeness of their good and loving Father, God. When all men understand and believe in the Fatherhood of God they will feel and live in peace, prosperity, and happiness. Jesus reminded us that we are gods and sons of the Most High.
There are many more than the required number of sincere souls, I feel sure. If these will join in working to lift the world out of bondage to error into the freedom of Truth I believe we can do it. This thing is possible because God is all-powerful, and when so many work with Him there can be no failure. Because righteousness is the only real and lasting condition in the universe, anything less is unreal, temporary, and unworthy of man’s attention. This is why two righteous men have so much more power than ten thousand men who do not believe in their own divinity.
Will you, dear reader, be one of a host who will join in working to overcome the negative thinking in the world? The following statement has been suggested for us all to meditate upon in concerted spiritual unity of thought each day of this week:
The world which God created in the beginning was a good, harmonious world, and it is still a good, harmonious world, and it will always be a good, harmonious world.
The Spirit of truth is now revealing this perfect world to me, and God is helping me to reveal its true character to many people. I agree with God’s ideal, good creation and I am working with Him with all my heart, soul, and strength to bring His world into manifestation here and now.
Please read this statement over carefully until you enter into the universality of its spirit. Can you agree with its spirit, and do you believe the goal is attainable? does it help you to realize how we can help God bring His kingdom into the earth at this time? Those who undertake this work should cultivate perfect faith in the reality of God’s spiritual creation as the only true creation.
With our attention fixed upon God as all-pervading love, harmony, power, wisdom, and peace, let us lay all thoughts about earthly problems aside and rest in His presence as we meditate upon this statement. Let us do this several times a day faithfully, spending as much time at each period as we can before our thoughts begin to wander. As you and a host of others who are joining with us begin to realize this great truth all of us will be brought closer to God and there is bound to be a definite uplifting and freeing effect produced in the consciousness of all the people in the world. God needs the help of all His children in working out His plans for their good in the manifest world.
Our goal seems to me to be most worthwhile, because it gets at the basic cause of man’s difficulties, his attitude toward God and other men. In co-operating in this effort we are not only co-operating with one another but with Jesus Christ in bringing the kingdom of God into manifestation. It is not our desire to interfere with the freedom of anybody’s thinking but only to help all men to become free from their age-old bondage of ignorant thinking about their relationship to God the Father. The promise is: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Jesus said: “Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
