UNITY IS PRACTICAL
Today Unity is practical is to say Unity is less concerned with theory than results. An engineer friend likens
it to the difference between engineering and physics. A physicist is more concerned with theory, but, an engineer
takes that theory and applies it in a practical sense to build something. Unity is less concerned with theology
(religious theory), than it is with application. Unity takes the position that religion only has value to the
extent that it is practiced day by day. In fact, the original name of Unity was "The Society of Practical
Christianity."
Unity teaches what most people believe in their heart of hearts to be true - it's just that they never figured
there would be a church sensible enough to teach it! One Sunday, a man said to me, "Unity is the one church where I
don't have to park my brain at the door when I come in." Another said, "This is the only church where I felt better
after church than before."
For many people, religion is austere and forbidding. The story is told of a monastery, whose order followed many
practices of self-denial, including silence; except for two words, spoken in an interview with the abbot once every
ten years. After his first ten years, one monk approached the abbot with his first words uttered in that time:
"Food cold." "Yes, my son" the abbot replied. Ten years later, the monk's two words were "Bed hard," to which the
abbot again replied, "Yes, my son. I understand." After ten more years, the monk said, "I quit." The abbot frowned
and said; "I'm not surprised. You've been complaining ever since you got here!"
When we say Unity is "practical Christianity," we mean that it teaches us how to affirm God in the midst of
life, not how to deny the reality of our physical existence. The question we need to ask as truth seekers Is "Does
my religion affirm life?" Unity supports us in having well-integrated and balanced lives. "
Lately, teachings have crept into some, churches that propose that the physical life Is "just an illusion." I
have noticed over the years that individuals who subscribe to such a belief find it difficult to make their lives
work. In a material sense. Energy follows thought, and if we believe that the physical realm isn't, real, it tends
to cooperate with our belief - and disappear!
Unity does not separate us into two parts. one good and one bad. Although Unity teaches that we have a four-fold
nature (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual), none of it is separate from God and all of it is good. Unity
does not teach that the ego is bad, as some non-Unity teachings do. We believe that the ego is just our personal
self: a vehicle by means of which the divinity in us expresses in manifest life.
There is no aspect of life that should be kept separate fr9m God. Unity does not separate the marketplace and
spirituality. Our .purpose as human beings is to materialize the spiritual and to spiritualize the material realm.
They are just two aspects, or expressions, of the same reality.
Copyright Rev. Gregory Barrettte 1993
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