profounder understanding of himself than can ever be gleaned from books; and if the person's belief isn't true, the sooner he discovers this the better. Theology cannot be grounded on living co-ordinates: or rather it can only be built by turning living co-ordinates into dead ones. Of course theology is important, like any other theoretical subject. One of the advantages of belonging to a Church with an historical tradition is that it has a body of sound doctrine. It is important also to study the military strategy and tactics of the past; but you cannot fight the next war on the tactics of the last war. Look what happened in 1940. Nor can you fight today's battle against evil on the doctrinal inspiration of the Council of Nicea. Nor for that matter can you cross-examine today using the technique of a generation ago, because the technique of lying has improved in the meantime. It is easy to tell people who have never learned to pray; they betray themselves by every word they speak.
To recapitulate therefore. Merely because Christians do not generally experience the truth of these sayings of Christ, (anything you want, you can have), is no excuse either for saying he was talking nonsense nor for saying that his advice needs watering down. It means that Christians generally do not experience the type of relationship which Christ was confident he had with God; and because of this Christians frequently completely fail to understand the circumscribing limits that the relationship would impose on the things for which it was possible to ask.
Eternal life, or a perfectly relaxed consciousness which I suggest is the same thing, is not the goal of life, but is a means for solving life's problems correctly. For instance, it is a means of making requests to God, because without the right frame of mind, one will make the wrong requests. And so one comes up against the all-important question, “What frame of mind or consciousness does solve life's problems correctly?”, because that is the one a…