Spiritual Ideas and Material Concepts

DR. CURT GENTSCH

It is a startling fact that with the general drift of human thought toward worldliness, many spiritual ideas have sunk to the level of mere material concepts, and this has led to great confusion. Much disappointment, if not despair, would have been spared mankind, had they been sufficiently enlightened with regard to the nature of these concepts, which often have ceased to have anything in common with true ideas.

To illustrate, most people believe that they will get their rights by going to court. The judges there may be impartial, and earnestly bent upon passing righteous judgment; but when it is remembered that often what is considered right in one city means almost an offense in a town not far distant, and that a court sentence is frequently the result of that which some three people happen to believe to be right at a certain time, such and such circumstances being considered, one begins to understand why a sentence is sometimes far removed from the realization of justice. According to the law books, justice and human rights are often distinctly different from that which mistaken human sense is apt to name them.

The same is true of the concept of love. Who would deny that the concept of the majority of people with regard to love is distinctly material or sensual, far removed from the higher though still human love of a mother for her child, or one's love toward friends or native country, and yet much father from the love referred to by the beloved disciple when he wrote: "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." How futile seems the endeavor with the same word to designate concepts which are so diametrically opposed to each other!

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