December 21

December 21 – AM          Page 69-70, How It Works, Chapter 5

Whatever our ideal turns out to be, we must be willing to grow toward it.  We must be willing to make amends where we have done harm, provided that we do not bring about still more harm in so doing.  In other words, we treat sex as we would any other problem.  In meditation, we ask God what we should do about each specific matter.  The right answer will come, if we want it.
God alone can judge our sex situation.  Counsel with persons is often desirable, but we let God be the final judge.  We realize that some people are as fanatical about sex as others are loose.  We avoid hysterical thinking or advice.

December 21 – PM          Page 55-56, We Agnostics, Chapter 4

In this book you will read the experience of a man who thought he was an atheist. His story is so interesting that some of it should be told now.  His change of heart was dramatic, convincing, and moving.
Our friend was a minister’s son.  He attended church school, where he became rebellious at what he thought an overdose of religious education.  For years thereafter he was dogged by trouble and frustration.  Business failure, insanity, fatal illness, suicide—these calamities in his immediate family embittered and depressed him.  Post-war disillusionment, ever more serious alcoholism, impending mental and physical collapse, brought him to the point of self-destruction.
One night, when confined in a hospital, he was approached by an alcoholic who had known a spiritual experience.  Our friend’s gorge rose as he bitterly cried out:  “If there is a God, He certainly hasn’t done anything for me!”  But later, alone in his room, he asked himself this question:  “Is it possible that all the religious people I have known are wrong?” While pondering the answer he felt as though he lived in hell.  Then, like a thunderbolt, a great thought came.  It crowded out all else:
“Who are you to say there is no God?”