Aren’t we the servant, the slave, of our belief as long as we merely believe and do not activate our faith in the good – which contains hope – through a goal-oriented life, so that what we believe in and what we hope for, can be realized, that is, can become real and visible to us, existing as actuality? Everything else – the mere "belief " – is simply like groping about in the fog, unable to see anything and maybe even losing our way, as long as our faith remains a passive faith. What is reality if we merely believe? What is truth if we merely believe? What can we hold onto if we just stand in the fog of passive faith? What can we see or where are our prospects? Gabriele, wouldn’t "servile faith" be the right way to describe a belief that envelops us like a fog, behind which are secrets, the world of our desires or our worries, what we hope for or do not wish for? How do you see it?

When we hear the word "belief," then associations awaken in many of us, such as: "I believe in my husband or wife, in my children, in my abilities at work" or: "I believe that what the media reports is true." And so, we also believe, for instance, that we have safeguarded our life through contributions to social security or through health insurance or life insurance. We believe in a rosy, happy future and much, much more. Thus, the word "belief " includes hope; we hope for what we desire. But belief alone does not give us a guarantee. And so, the question arises: Is there a guarantee that our life will take the course we hope for and have tried to safeguard?

In the end, to believe not only gives us no guarantee, but it leads us, time and again, into vagueness, into wishful thinking, into pipe dreams, into uncertainty. What we believe in, which we nevertheless activate directly or indirectly, can be compared to an opaque veil or a sea of mist, behind which reality, what really is, lies hidden. Behind the veil, behind the mist, is the secret, hidden in the word "belief."

Personally, the word "belief " makes me uneasy, because one cannot rely on people, on ideas and desires, on present and coming events. Who knows what tomorrow may bring – whether we can still practice our profession, whether our marriage will last, whether we will be on welfare someday or, when we fall ill, if we will receive enough sickpay or whether our insurance company will approve of hospitalization and pay for it when we fall ill, whether our social security will be enough to care for us properly in our old age, or whether we will still be alive at all at this point, whether our ideas and desires will be realized, etc., etc.

Mere belief which is based on an assumption, an idea, like a hypothesis, gives us no clarity, no security. It is a figment of the imagination, like a soap bubble that we look at and are enthralled with – and yet don’t know whether it will burst into nothing in the next moment. We hang on to an idea and know nothing about its reality potential. And so, we tie ourselves to unrealistic constructs. Mere belief does not make us free. If we don’t do what we believe in, if we don’t make it become reality, then we have a servile faith and we are slaves, because belief and reality come apart, as it were. What we "believe" – our ideas, our assumptions – is like a haze that obscures our clear view of reality. This "belief " leads us to believe in our own ideas of the future, projections that keep us from living consciously and in the present, thus robbing us of what the day wants to bring us.

For me, an active faith in God, a religious faith, is decisive; for the true believer not only believes, but also puts himself into the loving hands of the Almighty and carries out the will of God step by step. Through this, a change takes place in the life of such a person; he reaches a certain security by way of the increased radiation of eternal light in his soul and in his physical body. And by taking further steps toward God, he gains the certainty that God, the eternal Father, wants only the best for him. Then he does not merely believe, but from aspects of his God-experience, he knows that God holds his life in His hands. It is the life of a person who entrusts himself to God and orients his feelings, sensations, thoughts, words and actions to God, to the Ten Commandments and to the Sermon on the Mount, which the Spirit of God gave us human beings as maxims for our life. Then religious belief does not remain a nebulous faith. Such a person expands his consciousness more and more, thereby gaining enlightenment and wisdom through God.

For the person who lives consciously in God, life is in the present, because he is no longer driven by anxiety about the past or the future. He conscientiously plans his life – which also includes his family or his life "in solo" and his place of work – and surrenders his plan to God in the certainty that God will guide him in his plan just as it is good for his soul, but also for his person.

And so, we can poke around in the dark with our ifs and buts as long as we like, but our life remains a game of chance – if we don’t place ourselves in the hands of the One who is our security, God.

And so, this institution – like the Catholic Church – is paid for its inactive faith. Nevertheless, this means that every Protestant must be active, through his work and his wages in order to pay church taxes – for a faith which is perhaps inactive. And so, here, too, action has to take place in order to finance an inactive faith. Is mere faith then really enough, or does this faith require that the church folk support, that is, pay, those who preach mere faith? In the end, these preachers likewise activate the mere faith propagated by them, by teaching their faithful what they should do. Simply by being taught, mere faith is indirectly given a direction – that is, it is activated – through its creed, for instance. In its broadest sense, the Catholic Church teaches this, too, for they hitch their sacraments onto the belief in God, thus leading their believers to avail themselves of the sacraments. And the whole thing rests, in turn, on uncertainty. The church taxpayer pays for this and places in his payment, as it were, the hope that the church officials – with their teaching of a more or less inactive faith – will make God active for him.

What have people been praying for, over so many centuries? "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done …" But how should His will be done if not through those of us who become active in His Spirit by following His commandments step by step?

The dynamism, the deed, lies in the will of God, in the "Let there be." Shall the children remain inactive and let the Father do things alone? This is why, as Original Christians in Universal Life, we pray "Our Kingdom come, Your will be done."

And so, the church believers pay church taxes for something they may merely trust in, yet which contains no proof. In my opinion, there is a very clever psychology of selling behind this. One does business using inactive faith or the belief in sacraments, which the believers pay for and in the end don’t know what they will get for it. Every one of us ultimately asks what an item will cost. The goods we are thinking of buying are real. And so, we have some-thing with which to weigh its value. Where religious faith is not concerned, the saying "a bird in hand is worth two in the bush" holds true. However, where religious faith is concerned, many a believer be-comes illogical, and thinks that he should leave all the birds in the bush. And therefore he has nothing that can really be assessed.

The Protestant institution, which teaches that mere faith or trust in redemption through Christ is sufficient, is thus selling something shrouded in mystery. Here the "buyer" becomes fatalistic in his belief. He slavishly believes that perhaps the one who imparts his faith, the representative of said institution, can see beyond the mist or lift the veil. Since the church officials can produce nothing more regarding reality than the said "mysteries of God" – upon which the whole system of faith taught by them is based – mere faith is a dogmatic opinion, but must not necessarily be the truth. For the one who teaches it cannot prove his teaching. Yet he demands money for this in the form of church taxes, and the servile faithful pay up.

From the Original Christian point of view, one can say that belief is a step toward truth. This is a necessary prerequisite, in order to be able to take any steps of actualization, that is, of putting the teaching into practice in one’s daily life. The belief sets the goal, as it were, giving light on the path which the one following Jesus of Nazareth must walk actively – by doing. If we do what we have believingly assumed to be the truth, to be the teaching of our faith, then what we believe in, what we hope for, will become increasingly real and tangible for us – because we experience it by doing it.

And so, active faith has to follow mere belief; the steps have to be taken, in order to look into the so-called "mysteries" that are attributed to God. But God does not keep any secrets from us, His children. If God had secrets, He would be imperfect, because anyone who has to hide something, who cannot bring it out into the open, remains inscrutable. But God is clarity and purity. In the eternal Being, there is nothing hidden, no hidden treasure that would belong to only one, so to speak, namely to the one who guards his secret. God, our eternal Father, has made us heirs to the divine kingdom. And so, there is nothing that is hid-den, because we are heirs to the Kingdom of God. Through our sins, we people have woven the veil and created the mist that bars us from a view of the life that is our divine heritage.

The veil and the mist that lie before us can also be compared to a wall, behind which the treasure lies hidden, our divine heritage which we can experience once more when, with the help of the Christ of God, we gradually flood the wall with light or dismantle it by clearing up our sins. The first step toward the wall, in order to become active, is called believing. I believe in God, my eternal Father, and in Christ, my Redeemer. I believe that God is the life that sets me free.

When we become aware of the presence of God, we then take the next step; it is called hope. We hope that God will help us to recognize the wall, the countless stones of sin, so that we may repent and clear them up, thus transforming them into light and power. If we follow what Jesus taught us in the Sermon on the Mount: "Every one who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock: And the rain came and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And every one who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house; and it fell; and great was the fall of it," then our belief will become an active faith because we do the will of God and dismantle the wall stone by stone with the help of the Christ of God, our Redeemer. This means, referring to the mist and to the veil, that they become lighter because the sins that have piled up like a wall before our divine heritage become less and less. From hope grows the confidence that vivifies us more and more. With the help of our Redeemer, we will day by day then also clear up our recognized sins – such as envy, quarreling, hate and resentment – and no longer do them.

The means of providing our soul with light lies in spiritual deeds – in clearing up the sins that we have recognized – and not in mere faith. Only by this means will we attain our divine heritage, because we walk the spiritual path of actualization consisting of the step-by-step fulfillment of the divine commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, thus striving toward God. Then we will gradually do what Jesus also taught us, and re-gain our divine heritage again in order to become the image of our Father once more. Active faith then leads to the truth and does not remain an illusion. Then we look deeper and comprehend more. We experience God’s guidance – but also, and this is the best thing, the voice of the heart. This is the path from belief to enlightenment. To believe means that we become aware of the infinite power and love of our Father, which is in everything and which dwells in us, too. But only by our getting going, only by our becoming active, do we bring the blessing of God into action. Active faith means decision; it means our own effort, in order to come closer to the goal of God and the divine in us. The greater our love for God is, the less effort we must make, because our love for God is the power that makes us heirs to love, once more.

The Spirit of the Christ of God taught and teaches us in Universal Life the path of enlightenment, of experience and comprehension of all things. But He also teaches us about our divine heritage, which we can come into again when we allow our faith to become active; this means to walk the path within so that we may again hear the voice of the heart, lost to us through a wall of sin.

I have another question: How much does this path in Universal Life cost? Does Universal Life have paying members, similar to the supporters of the institutional churches in Germany who have to pay their church taxes in order to take part?

Universal Life has many million followers who are under no obligation of any kind. Free and without pressure, that is, without compulsory contributions, each one can accept the word of God and live accordingly, or let it be. Many members make voluntary contributions, however, not for the benefit of people, but for the dissemination of the divine word. The prices of the books and cassettes are calculated in such a way that the production costs are covered, and that the word can also be translated into other languages and distributed in foreign countries. A small part of the price pertains to those who work in the book and cassette production departments.

Many brothers and sisters in Universal Life – when they actualize the belief in God, our Father, and in Christ, our Redeemer, that is, when they do what God gave through Moses in the Ten Commandments, and what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount – experience that step by step they grow closer to the One who dwells in each one of us: the Spirit of love and of freedom.

If there were nothing more than mere "faith" in God, without the possibility that what it consists of could become reality in us – through our doing, through our becoming active by putting into practice the commandments of God and the Sermon on the Mount – we would remain slaves, dependent and blind.

No church institution, none of the various communities of faith or religious groups and no Bible group either, can prove that what they believe is the truth. Only the individual can prove to himself that God is reality – when he lets his faith become active and orients his doing and not doing to the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. He cannot prove his inner experience, the communication with the All-One, to any second or third party, and this is why no church institution or community of faith or religious group should ask for membership fees and certainly not for church taxes. Voluntary donations at any time, but this, too, only on an absolutely free basis.

It is absurd to collect something like a church tax or membership fees for something nebulous. Would we buy a car surrounded by fog and scarcely visible even when the head-lights are on high beam, when we don’t know what the shape and qualities of the car are, how it handles and which direction should be taken to get out of the fog bank?

In Universal Life we say: from belief to knowledge and from knowledge to wisdom, that is, to enlightenment. In this way, we very gradually become again images of God, that which Jesus gave us for our life’s path. The Original Christians also have their Creed which can be found at the end of this pamphlet.

A person grows closer to God in his inner being when he does not entangle himself in doctrines or dog-ma, but lives in the awareness of the simple teaching that tells of the temple of God which every person is since God dwells in every person. This simple teaching also tells of the love for God and for neighbor and of the silent chamber in which every actively believing person can cultivate the heart prayer, thus coming into communication with the eternal One. And so, a person who does what Jesus taught – to repent of his sins (aspects of which he can learn about each day) and to clear things up on the path of asking for forgiveness and of forgiving – will then find them transformed by the light of the All-One, if he no longer does these things. In this way, the person’s soul be-comes ever more light-filled and the person himself ever more God-conscious. The mist starts to lift, the veil falls, belief has melted away and the person has not only become knowing, but has attained divine wisdom. There are no longer any secrets for him, because everything has be-come illuminated by his having cleared up all his heavy sins. Such a per-son will be aware of what it means to very gradually become the image of God. He then lives more and more in God; his feelings, sensations, thoughts, words and actions have become clear, that is, largely in accord with the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount.

A wise man builds on Jesus, the Christ, and on His teaching, by following Him, that is, by doing what He teaches. The true follower of Jesus gradually becomes wise, and sees things as they are and not as they shine. He has lifted the veil, over-come the fog bank, that is, the stone wall. There are no longer any secrets for him, because His path is Christ, the Redeemer of all souls and men, who led him to the truth, to life.

In order to walk the path with and through Christ, we need no ceremonies, rites or cults. Neither do we need cardinals, bishops, priests, pastors, or even a human "Holy Father." Only one thing is necessary: to be honest with oneself and have a little spark of love for the One who loves all His children. By practicing love for God and for one’s neighbor, a person will find his way to the One who is love, freedom and unity. And he will also find his way to those brothers and sisters who fulfill the will of God step by step. This is the central teaching of the Christ of God in Universal Life. May the one who can grasp it, grasp it. May the one who wants to leave it, leave it.

From my own experience, I can say that an active effort to fulfill the will of God step by step in one’s everyday life brings inner certainty, an expansion on the horizon of one’s consciousness; it brings confidence and a good brotherly relationship with one’s fellow man. Likewise, I also know from my own experience that I need to make an inner effort again and again in order to get out of passivity and to help my faith become active. This means overcoming human laziness and not letting myself sink into old, ingrained patterns of behavior.

If I, myself, do not take my life in my hands and follow up my "belief," my knowledge, with the diligence of action, then I let myself drift along, allowing someone else to take over the rudder of my life’s ship. It is convenient to let oneself be controlled, instead of determining things for oneself – but where does this lead? And where did the "doing-nothing" lead so-called Christianity? It has decisively influenced the course of events on this earth. The result can be seen clearly in the condition of the earth and of human society. This was and is not the will of God. But whose will is it then? Cannot the exclusion of the commandment of "doing" from the teaching of the Nazarene have been a clever and deliberate move? Man’s indolence which, for instance, favors and finds pleasure in the joys of life, in a life of luxury and power, "went wild" over this idea – with well-known catastrophic consequences.

A question: Isn’t belief, in the final analysis, speculation? I speculate about what would be best for my human well-being. This is then the right faith for me. My neighbor seeks out a faith for himself, in which there are aspects that are pleasing or useful for him. And don’t the variations of the "right kind of faith" often become pat phrases of human self-justification often leading to intolerance? One need only think about the so-called wars of faith. However, beyond a just faith, which we attain by an activity based on belief, stands the immutable justice of God, His truth, which is, eternally.