RICHNESS AND POVERTY

I have been told that money (i.e. a coin) was first used as a "temple money": When people came to temple to sacrifice from afar, they couldn't bring along the sacrificial animals, so they exchanged animals for this temple money in their home town and with this money they were able to buy animals at the temple. And let's not forget that the first bankers were the spiritual order of the Knights Templars!
According to Pekka Ervast, just as the candidates of the ancient Mysteries had to pass the trials of the four elements, today life itself is a Mystery School and the trial of earth for each of us is how we deal with money. Rudolf Steiner in turn pointed out that in fact in this world "stones are made bread" - we must use money to purchase a living. The less developed a man is, the more selfish he is and only wants to satisfy his own needs; But the more developed he is, the more is he tempted to pursue the riches for the benefit of the others. An old friend used to say, "Money is energy": it's meant to keep moving in order to stay healthy.

Mr.12:13-17. "Render to Ceasar the things that are Ceasar's, and to God the things that are God's." Ceasar's image on a penny and superscription: "Augustus, the Son of God" made money as it was, an idol. When it was found from the adversaries of Jesus, they were exposed as co-operators of the Roman Empire. Jesus is saying that give the image of an idol, instrument of oppression and exploitation, back to its owner. Instead, give yourselves- as you are made unto image of God - entirely to God. We may remember here, that English word "talent" is due to "Talent" in the Bible - in Greek "talanton" - which was a sum of money in ancient Rome.
Mt.26:6-13: A woman celebrates a sacramental act by pouring a precious ointment on Jesus' head, and his disciples said: "This ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor." But Jesus replied: "She hath wrought a good work upon me." In this context we may also think of three wise men who worshiped baby-Jesus and presented him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Indeed; Worshiping Christ, loving God, goes before love for neighbors, and even it is for grace that we are able to love Him back as He has loved us first - and keeps loving whether we love Him back or not!
We are merely housekeepers of the Lord in His creation: Everything we have is only for a loan. In the beginning man was also God's possession but the fall was followed by independence as well as growing selfishness. We have separated ourselves from God. Salvation is not ours unless we freely accept it and willingly give ourselves to the Lord. We are tenants in the Vineyard of life, we own nothing, and we must pay the rent to the landlord; bring fruit of experiences to the Giver of Life that will sustain our eternal entity - treasures in heaven - or else we have wasted our life!
Mr. 12:41-44: Poor widow and her two mites. Thomas Keating interprets the story as follows: Many people are rich with the gifts of the Holy Spirit which they cast much into the treasury of the church. These are the gifts of their abundance. What God really wants from you...is YOU: "She of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living."
Poor widow also shows us that when money is given for spiritual purpose, Christ beholds the giver with blessing. Everything I do for my church - not so much financially, but through work - never feels enough, because I always receive so much more! My congregation is where I have worked voluntarily for longer and more than in any other place - AND it's the only place where I've not once felt tired!

In Sermon on the Mount Jesus says "Take no thought, saying, what shall we eat? or, what shall we drink? or, wherewithal shall we be clothed?"..."But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Mt.6:31, 33).
When short with the money, I have found this comforting. Orthodox theology calls this attitude "holy carelessness". However, I have found this Chinese proverb which seems to complete what Jesus must have meant: "God will surely feed the birds, but He will not throw food into their nest." ("Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are you not much better than they?" Mt.6:26.)
We are asking our Father to give us this day our daily bread: Not abundantly but just enough for one day at a time. Like Manna in the wilderness not for store but fresh for each day! When Jesus fed 5000 men, some suggest that people actually followed His example: Share what you got with your neighbors and all shall have enough!
"Seek ye first the kingdom of God...and all these things shall be added unto you": Jesus simply means we must do our worldly duties and yet constantly keep the ideal before our inner eyes. We all have within us Martha who is worried and upset about many things, and Mary who knows that only one thing is needed: to sit at the Lord's feet and listen to what He says.
"If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions...Then come, follow me" (Mt.19:21).
"For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it" (Luke 9:24).
"He must become greater, I must become less" (John 3:30).
- All these passages mean the same.
"If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you" (Luke 17:6): Mulberry tree is human being, earth is a sensory world and sea is the world of life forces. Man must "plant" himself in the life forces.
We have to become aware that we are poor in spirit and start to seek the kingdom of God. As a model we see the blind man (Mark 10) begging for the light by the roadside of life - when Jesus is passing by, he starts shouting more and more without bothering about those who try to silence him: "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!" And we will find out that the kingdom is within (Luke 17:21) - "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?" (1. Cr. 6:19).

Sufi mystics taught that both richness and poverty are divine gifts: Richness is corrupted by ungratefulness and poverty is corrupted by greed. Poverty is detachment of the heart from everything else but God, and richness is focusing the heart on the undefined. All belongs to God. When a seeker says farewell to possession, there are no more opposites and he's above both concepts, richness and poverty.
Poverty is lack for that which is necessary; lack for that which is unnecessary is not poverty. Everyone but God is poor, because we all need God to exist. If there is someone who doesn't need anyone to exist, he is absolutely rich. There is only one like this: God. Others are absolutely poor since they need Him to exist.
Man is under obligation to use his reason and will. God has not left his servants without work in his kingdom. Man ought to do what he can and leave the rest for God. It is told that someone said to Sahl, a persian mystic: "A thief broke into my house and stole my things", and Sahl answered: "Thank God that Satan did not break into your heart to steal your faith."

A.P. Shepherd: Spiritual Science and the Christian Churches

Chapter XV from his book: Rudolf Steiner, Scientist of the Invisible. Floris Books 1991 (Originally published in 1954). Arthur Pierce Shepherd (died 1968) was ordinated in the Church of England, worked as a parish priest, Archdeacon of Dudley and Canon of Worcester Cathedral. He was one who carefully tested Steiner's statements for himself with an open mind and found them vital for resolving human needs in our confused and bitter times.

The facts which we have set out so far in regard to the attitude of Spiritual Science to Christianity must present a good many problems to the minds of professing Christian people, and especially to those who are leaders or official ministers of the Christian Churches.
The simple-minded, devout Christian may wonder how he can ever penetrate to the understanding of the facts revealed by Spiritual Science and whether there is an implication that his simple faith is not enough. Again and again in nis writings Steiner declares that he will never willingly disturb such a simple, living faith, which is for all people a right attitude to Christianity, an attitude through which Christ has worked through the centuries of Christendom. In a lecture on "Spiritual Science and Christianity" he quotes, as the starting-point of his theme, this saying of Hegel's:

The deepest thought is bound up with the figure of Christ, and the greatness of the Christian religion lies in the fact that it can be understood at every stage of culture, and yet calls to the highest wisdom.

At the same time, Steiner does not present Anthroposophy only to the intellectual or subtle-minded. The deepest apprehension of it does not depend upon brilliance of intellect, but upon the right qualities of soul, and especially upon that childlike spirit which Christ declares is the key to the kingdom of heaven. Moreover, although a Christian of simple faith may not himself explore the paths of Higher Knowledge, its fruits, in the illumination and conviction which it brings to his belief, will be of inestimable blessing to him.
The thougthful, intelligent Christian cannot fail to be deeply impressed by the Christo-centric nature of the Anthroposophical view of men and the universe, by its factual explanation of spiritual realities and theological dogmas, by the new light and understanding it brings to the study of the Bible, and by its overcoming of the barrier between sacred and secular knowledge. At the same time he will be brought up against new and startling facts, that lead him beyond the range of normal experience, and demand a restatement of some theological or traditional points of view. Nor is it only the thoughtful, orthodox Christian that will be tempted to oppose so radical a "change of mind", but opposition will come from the advanced Biblical critics, whose brilliant destructive criticism is not only disputed in its findings by Anthroposophy, but even in its methods and fundamental assumptions.
But whether the opposition is based upon sincere doubt, or whether the meeting of anthroposophical ideas with scepticism or derision is really a line of self-defence against something which threatens one's own position of intellectual superiority - the answer is the same. It is impossible to understand - still less to judge - the findings of Anthroposophy, just as much in matters of religion as in the fields of science or history, except on the ground of the fundamental concepts about man and the universe which Anthroposophy claims are revealed by "higher knowledge", and on which its findings are based. It is quite possible to reject those fundamental concepts, in which case the findings dependent upon them would fall to the ground. But to attribute a meaning to the findings, based upon another set of concepts, is a false line of criticism.
For example, Steiner's declaration that the physical and spiritual union of the divine Christ with Jesus of Nazareth took place at the Baptism of Jesus by John, has been greeted in some quarters as a revival of the Adoptionist heresy, with its denial of the essential union of the divine and human natures in Jesus. This view is based on the generally-accepted assumption that a man consists entirely of that which is the product of the union of his father and mother, and is born from his mother's womb potentially complete. If Jesus was both man and God, the divine nature, it is claimed, must have been completely incarnate within him from birth.
But Anthroposophy reveals that the nature of man is very different; that in each of us an eternal spirit-self is manifesting in our physical nature, and that in the earliest physical stages of human life that eternal self is not yet operating from within, but from without the human organism. Furthermore, its working is not manifest in full ego-consciousness until the dawn of manhood, nor effective in full soul-transformation until nearly the thirtieth year. Thus Steiner sees Jesus of Nazareth as having arrived at the full unfolding of his humanity, by the working, within his very special human organism, of an eternal human self of the greatest spiritual power and wisdom. At the Baptism in Jordan that great human spirit which had been reincarnated as the higher ego of Jesus of Nazareth, yielded up its perfected human organism, with its developed human ego-consciousness, to be wholly indwelt and informed by the divine being of the Christ. In Jesus Christ, we see the being of God in complete union with the perfect being of Man. In the three years of the ministry the Eternal Word is manifest in human form, in a human life, until in the Mystery of Golgotha, the Son of God made Man achieves the redemption of the world.
It is possible to deny the conception of man's being on which Steiner's presentation of the Incarnation is based, but it is quite irrational to attribute a meaning to that presentation, which is based on quite other fundamental concepts.
There is, of course, a natural tendency for the official leaders of the Churches to regard with suspicion a movement like Anthroposophy, and in Rudolf Steiner's lifetime he met the bitterest opposition from these quarters. Official Christianity has generally been opposed to mysticism, as a menace to ecclesiastical organisation, and subversive 0f its accepted ways of thought and life. This opposition expressed itself in the wildest criticism of Steiner, as a charlatan, or an Anti-Christ, accusations which any knowledge of his writings could disprove at once. Quite recently Nicolas Berdyaev, in a very hostile and personal attack on Steiner, based on attendance at a single course of his lectures, wrote:

Not one ray of light seemed to fall on him from above. His sole purpose and aspiration was to obtain possession of all things from below, by his own titanic devices, and to break through by a passionate effort to the realm of the spirit.

Many passages in Steiner's writings could confute this. One will suffice:

Every occultist today clearly understands that this concept of Grace must belong to his inner practice of life in a quite special degree. There is a golden saying, especially for the occult investigator, "Have patience and wait, not until the truths are grasped by you, but until they come to you." One should say to one's self, "Grace has brought me a certain number of truths. I will wait patiently until further truths stream to me."

Another line of attack - only too frequent with "orthodox" theologians - is to attempt to brush away the whole subject by declaring it to be a revival of an ancient heresy, long ago disproved and condemned. Apart from being purely negative, this criticism disregards the fact that nearly every heresy was the assertion of a neglected truth, which, however, it failed properly to relate to the rest of Christian truth. Because Steiner taught the possobility of supersensible knowledge, Anthroposophy has often been condemned as a revival of the ancient Gnostic heresy. But the Gnostics were not heterics because they possessed "gnosis", the faculty of spiritual clairvoyance. Again and again Steiner pointed out what the heresy of the Gnostics was and disclaimed it, showing at the same time how difficult it was for them, at that time, to rise to the right understanding.

Herein [he writes], lies the difference between the Gnosis and true esoteric Christianity. The Gnostics did indeed recongnise Christ in his divinity. But they were never able to rise to the perception that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

On the other hand, he himself declared that

Christ in the soul of man, Jesus of Nazareth, experienced birth and death. This means that, for the first time, a God passed through human death.

The linking up of Christianity by Steiner to the ancient Mysteries is another ground of criticism of Anthroposophy by theologians. But thirty years ago the late Bishop Gore wrote:

The atmosphere of the mystery religions and of Hellenistic theosophy, with its yearning for divine fellowship and spiritual light and knowledge and salvation and a new birth, and its love of sacramental symbolism and fellowship, has a good deal to do with the diffusion of the Christian Church.

Again, in his book Liturgy and Society, Father Hebert quotes Archbishop Söderblom as follows:

A day is coming when the science of religions will have learnt to interpret the much wider continuity of our Saviour's death and resurrection with the ancient pagan rituals.

Hebert also writes himself:

The Apostles Creed corresponds to the pagan myths of the Saviour-gods. It repeats the age-long theme of the dying god. But the startling words in it are the words, "suffered under Pontius Pilate." This salvation myth was enacted in the full light of history. This Saviour-God really died and rose again.

The whole theme of Steiner's book, Christianity as Mystical Fact, is that in Jesus Christ the hidden ritual of the ancient Mysteries was openly enacted, in an actual historical life.
But in regard to the relation between Anthroposophy and the Christian Churches, we may let Steiner speak for himself. In a lecture on "Spiritual Science and Christianity" he used these words:

It would be a misunderstanding to suppose that Spiritual Science is in any sense a new religious faith in place of the old one. To avoid all misconceptions, we may even say, when once they rightly understand it, people will realise that Anthroposophy as such, while it is the firmest and most sure support for religious life, itself is no religion. But it can nevertheless be an instrument to explain and to unfold the deepest truths and wisdom teachings, the most solemn and living mysteries of the religions. The farther we go in penetrating towards the spiritual worlds, the deeper content shall we find in the great Christian documents. The Christian documents appear to us in higher radiance, in deeper content and fullness of truth, when we approach them with that keen spiritual vision that can be gained by the help of Anthroposophy. It is true that the simplest mind can feel what truths there are in Christianity. But man's concsiousness will not always be satisfied with a dim feeling; he will want to evolve to a higher stage, he will want to know and to gain knowledge. And even when his consciousness has risen to the highest heights of wisdom, there will still be deep mysteries in Christianity. Christianity is for the simplest human soul, and it is for the most highly-developed intellectuality.

Steiner himself defined Anthroposophy as follows: "Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe." Anthroposophy deals directly, through higher knowledge, with the spiritual phenomena which are the subject matter of religion. It is not itself concerned with forms of worship or belief, or with matters of faith or order, or with the possession of a ministry or of sacraments. It arrives at direct knowledge about spiritual reality, and thereby throws light on a great deal which is the content of religion. But these facts are put forward as matters of scientific observation, and are in no sense dogmas which have to be believed if one wishes to be an Anthroposophist. While, therefore, Anthroposophy can be a great help to the understanding of the subject matter of religion, it can be approached from the standpoint of any or of no religion.
It is true that a Christian Church has come into being as the result of the teaching of Anthroposophy. This Church is called "The Christian Community". It came into being in the early twenties of this (last) century in Germany, amongst a group of men and women who felt the need for a revival of religious life, but had not been able to find what they sought at their Universities. They had been deeply moved by the teaching of Anthroposophy, and they came to Rudolf Steiner and asked him whether he could help them to express Christian faith and worship in terms of the knowledge arrived at through Spiritual Science, in a way which would lead to spiritual renewal. Steiner at first hoped that it might have been possible to implant the new impulse for Christianity, which he saw was essential, within the existing Church organisation, but he became convinced that that was impossible, and he gave them the fullest help, out of his own initiate knowledge, in the founding of "The Christian Community". But "The Christian Community" is not part of the Anthroposophical Society. It is an independent religious body with its own organisation.
It does not come within the scope of this book to give any detailed account of the Christian Community. It is a Church based on the historic fact of Christ, and its worship is centred round the Eucharist. There is much in its liturgical practice and its interpretation of the Bible and of Christian doctrine, that will enrich the life and thought of the Christian Church generally. One of its main principles is that it does not proselytise. It does not seek to draw to itself those who are already members of other Churches, but only those who are attached to no Church or who cannot find satisfaction in their own religion. It is fairly widely spread in Germany and there are a number of centres of the Church in this country.
But while there are many Anthroposophists who are members of the "Christian Community", there are also many who belong to other Churches, and who regard their membership in their own Church as of supreme value. They have discovered that what Spiritual Science has revealed to them only strengthens and confirms their Christian faith, altough at times it may lead to a re-statement or even a complete revision of the mode of expressing some Christian truths. But no conflict of loyalties is involved in being a member of any Church and at the same time a student of Anthroposophy. For Anthroposophy is not a religion, but a science.
Finally there is the traditional opposition of the Christian Church to any form of occultism, regarding it as something that is forbidden in Scripture. In the first place it is necessary to understand the background against which this scriptural prohibition came into being. We have seen how the progressive loss of true clairvoyance meant that men could only make direct contact with the spiritual world at a low and often sub-human level. Steiner himself points out how the Hebrew people was chosen for the very purpose of resisting this inevitable downward trend. They were to be a people who were to become aware of God by an inward intuition, by an almost physical awareness, and who were thus directly opposed to occultism, particularly in the debased forms in which it existed around them. It was therefore forbidden in Jewish law.
Today, however, we are facing a quite different situation. Modern science presents a world view from which any supersensible reality is excluded. On the other hand, there has awakened in the minds of very many people in the last half-century, a desire for spiritual knowledge, which is leading them into ways which, while they are not always rephensible, are methods which will never arrive a exact spiritual fact, and can easily lead to entirely mistaken concepts. Furthermore, unhealthy and even evil forms of occultism are far more widespread than the Christian or ordinary citizen imagines.
The path which is offered by Spiritual Science is that of direct, clear, conscius spiritual knowledge, evolved by an intensification of true scientific thinking, prepared for by a real moral preparation, and leading, not to a materialised vision of spiritual reality, but to the development of the higher organs of the human organism, by means of which spirit-reality can be perceived and understood in its own proper environment. To reject Spiritual Science is to leave uncontrolled the evil occult movements of our day, and to refuse the enlightment and certainty which is offered to religion. In these days when men's minds are absorbed in their scientific achievements, it is more than ever important to be able to read the spiritual signs of the times.