Religious evolution

Student: I would like to know if discernible evolution is going on in our religious institutions and if there's much hope and effort in that direction.

JarEl: There is tremendous hope. There is a direction. And, there is some progress. Religion is not going to take the place of spirituality for man and religion is not necessarily at this time going to bring man into a
state of spirituality. The ability of the spiritualized mind and the ability of a spiritualized religion to become dynamic as a movement on Earth is quite possible.

Such a movement is not very different from we are prescribing here in our lessons to spiritualize your mind and begin to bring it out into the world through acts of loving kindness and service to one's fellow. The best at this time that can be hoped for is that the major religions and religious institutions on your world begin to take into account their relationship to the service of their congregation at large rather than trying to dominate and direct the ethical and so called moral social behavior of their constituents.

But what I think you are asking and what I am attempting to answer, is yes, there is a tremendous amount of celestial help and influence within the institutions of religions all over the world. And, like any human and celestial relationship the majority of the outcome depends upon the ability of the human side of the relationship to acknowledge and therefore respond. In the face of so many religions, the tremendous arrogance at this time inhibits a lot of the celestial help.

But, there is hope and there is progress and many times you may find that people can be moved not so much by an authority of religion as much as through one of their own kind, someone who is closer to them. This is why the religion of Jesus strongly urges you as individuals to grow and change yourselves and therefore go out amongst the many.