They are still in circulation, all
these years later. I remember young, earnest,
long-haired converts to Christianity passing out these tracts at the beach when
I was a teenager in Santa Cruz, California. The Four Spiritual Laws were created by
Campus Crusade for Christ, an evangelical group, as a way of boiling the
religion down to a simple formula: 1.) God loves you and offers a
wonderful plan for your life. 2.) Man is
sinful and separated from God. Therefore,
he cannot know and experience God's love and plan for his life. 3.) Jesus Christ is God's only provision for man's sin. Through Him you can
know and experience God's love and plan for your life. 4.) We
must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and
experience God's love and plan for our lives.
There are serious flaws in these “Spiritual
Laws”. They present a negative view of
human nature, and a chauvinistic, dogmatic kind of religion. They beg questions that the tract can’t
answer. If “man” is so sinful and
separated from God, how can “man” know anything of God through Jesus, either? If God has a plan for your life, why hasn’t
God shown it to you already? Does it
make any sense to claim that Jesus is the only way to God, when clearly so many
other people have found God through other religions?
There must be equally simple ways
to express a humbler, kinder Christianity. So I offer an alternative:
The Four Spiritual Awes
1.) Awe for freedom. God’s awesome love enables you to choose your
life’s plan for yourself. Through
prayerful communion with God, and in soulful service to others, trust that you
will find the meaning and purpose of your existence.
2.) Awe for divinity. You are born in the awesome image of God, who
is love. Your failings are reminders to
return to your divine nature which, like all people, you so easily forget.
3.) Awe for the journey. There are many paths that can help you
remember your divine nature, and following Jesus Christ is one of them. The path of Jesus can be hard; it’s not easy
to love even your enemies, as he did. But it is an awesome challenge that is supremely worth your life.
4.) Awe for growth. Both individually and collectively, God calls
us to ever-more awesome expressions of compassion and spiritual awareness.
The one thing I’ve always admired
about the original “Four Spiritual Laws” tract is its circle diagram
illustrating the principle of putting God at the center of our lives. The tract showed a circle with the word SELF
emblazoned in the middle, with a little cross next to the circle. The next image is of a circle with a big
cross in it, with the word “self” in smaller letters next to it inside the
circle. The message: put Christ at the center of your life,
instead of your self, and you’ll experience a better life on this earth and
salvation in the next.
I’d draw the diagram somewhat
differently than the original one in the tract. I'd replace the cross image with the word "God". This might serve as a straightforward
description of the common goal of all the world’s great religions. We are most
human, most divine, and most fulfilled when we empty ourselves of our selves
and let God be at our center, overwhelming us with awe and compassion.
There are more spiritual awes than
four, I’m sure. But perhaps these are
enough to get us started on the path to discovering the rest of them!