Forgiveness and Jesus: The Meeting Place of "A Course in Miracles" and Christianity - Softcover

Wapnick Ph.D., Kenneth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0933291132 ISBN 13: 9780933291133

Publisher: Foundation for "A Course in Miracles", 2020

Synopsis

This book was written in response to the difficulties students have with the Course's Christian context and its emphasis on Jesus. It first discusses the principles of A Course in Miracles, specifically focusing on the dynamics of the ego and the meaning of forgiveness. Next, the teachings of Christianity are presented in the light of these principles, with the person of Jesus also discussed in depth. Throughout, special attention is given to the application of the Course's principles to important areas in our lives such as injustice, anger, sickness, sexuality, and money.

About this title

About the Author

Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and one of the foremost teachers of A Course in Miracles, which he has been working with since 1973, when he joined Dr. Helen Schucman, scribe of the Course, and Dr. William Thetford at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. He has written more than 25 books on the Course, including Love Does Not Condemn, Absence from Felicity: The Story of Helen Schucman and Her Scribing of 'A Course in Miracles,' The Message of 'A Course in Miracles,' and many others. He has also produced over 150 audio and video titles discussing the principles of the Course. He is President and co-founder, with his wife Gloria, of the Foundation for A Course in Miracles in Temecula, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From pages 318-320 Our Gift to Jesus

As we learn Jesus' lesson of forgiveness, love, and unity, he asks us to teach it to the world. He asks us now to bring it to others who "hear and hear again, but do not understand; see and see again, but do not perceive" (Is 6:9). He sends us out into the darkness of the world, not to preach the light, but to be the light. He exemplifies for us the perfect unity of his message with his life, the unity he wants us to exemplify as he did.

To speak his words of forgiveness without this same forgiveness expressed in our hearts would be to teach both forgiveness and unforgiveness as one; this conflict would then become our teaching message, and the one we would be learning as well. As the Course repeatedly emphasizes: as we teach so shall we learn. Jesus is there to teach his lesson to us in all the opportunities that our egos have provided. Joining us in them, he teaches us how to look at all things as instruments of forgiveness, "healing...[our] perception of separation" (T-3.V.9:1).

There is perhaps one last gift he would ask from us, though not for himself. This is the gift of gratitude. Our gratitude to Jesus is the expression of our gratitude to God for the gifts He has given us. It is born of the awareness that our Father has never left us, though in our deluded minds we believe we have left Him. The awareness of Jesus' presence and our gratitude for it, therefore, become another "way in which He [God] is remembered, for love cannot be far behind a grateful heart and thankful mind" (M-23.4:6).

Jesus led the way back to God. How could we not be grateful to him? He has asked from us only the gifts he wishes to bring to us. Our gratitude to him is the acceptance of these gifts of love. In Jesus we find the shining picture of Who we truly are, the Christ Whom God created one with Him. In Jesus we find not only the goal, but the loving hand that reaches back to lift us up to it. Our gratitude to him is reflected in our clasping his hand as his clasps ours, saying "Yes" to his plea on our behalf. In his clear and radiant eyes, we see the innocence our Father knows to be the light of all His children; and we give thanks we have not been left to wander uncertainly in a world dark with fear. In the midst of this ego hell, we hear Jesus call to us:

My brothers in salvation, do not fail to hear my voice and listen to my words. I ask for nothing but your own release. There is no place for hell within a world whose loveliness can yet be so intense and so inclusive it is but a step from there to Heaven. To your tired eyes I bring a vision of a different world, so new and clean and fresh you will forget the pain and sorrow that you saw before. Yet this a vision is which you must share with everyone you see, for otherwise you will behold it not. To give this gift is how to make it yours. And God ordained, in loving kindness, that it be for you (T-31.VIII.8).

When confronted by the dark despair buried deep within our hearts, seeing no way to be free from it, who would not be overwhelmed with gratitude to feel a comforting hand on the shoulder, a presence of gentle light, a reassuring word? When learning at last this light has a name, a certain identity, who would not be filled with tears at its sound, at its very taste upon one's lips when it is spoken? Who would not, upon discovering the personal love in the midst of the light, leave all darkness behind and fly to his open, welcoming arms?

Who would not, in joyous gratitude for his great gift of love and life and hope, do all he asked to bring this gift to others, so that all may share in it as one, letting the joyous "Thank You" resound in every instant salvation is offered to another and accepted in ourselves? Who would not, in all humility, love, and gratitude, stand before him with empty hands and a lifted heart, and echo the words of every prophet since Abraham: "Here I am, Lord, I've come to do your will"? From pages 330-331:

Every situation offers us this same opportunity to hear the Voice for forgiveness and truth speak to us in the very form we need to hear it, to practice forgiveness in the very way that may seem to be the most difficult. Let us identify with the Source of strength in us, not with our own weakness. In our going out to the needy, let us recognize that our own need for forgiveness is being held out to us. Let us not identify with the effect of the suffering that reflects the ego's guilt and fear, but, rather, identify with the Love that removes this cause of all pain.

Let us pray with all people -- poor and rich, oppressed and oppressor, murdered and murderer -- that we may not wander into the temptation of separation, but will allow our Father to lead us out of it. Let us pray that we may share Jesus' perception of justice by sharing his Identity in God, that we may not be tempted to exclude anyone from this Identity. Let us not fear what seems to be a failure, but embrace the faith that knows that God's justice will prevail. As our own sins are forgiven and God's justice is allowed to reign in our hearts, this justice will radiate from our innocence, blessing all people with the love that true forgiveness makes free.

Let us pray for each other that each of us may do the small part that has been assigned to us, recognizing that in this part is found the Whole. Let us pray for forgiveness to become perfect in us so that it may become perfect in the world. This is the only role we have in God's plan for salvation, and it is to be accomplished in our hearts where it will become the reality it has always been. We are to live and walk in the world of separated people, but we are to walk with the perception of wholeness that comes from our belief in our own wholeness. When we have no longer placed thoughts of sin and guilt, of punishment and triumph, of separation and pain, between ourselves and the world we love, we shall succeed in the work we are to do in Jesus' name. Then we shall know that we are not apart from the world, nor is it apart from us.

Edition details

• Publisher: Foundation for "A Course in Miracles"
• Publication date: 2020
• ISBN 10: 0933291132
• ISBN 13: 9780933291133
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 6
• Number of pages: 353