 We continue today with Chapter 20. Sin as an Adjustment The belief in sin is an adjustment, and an adjustment is a change, a shift in perception, or a belief that what was so before has been made different. Every adjustment is therefore a distortion and calls upon defenses to uphold it against reality. Knowledge requires no adjustments, and in fact is lost if any shift or change is undertaken, for this reduces it at once to mere perception, a way of looking in which certainty is lost and doubt has entered. To this impaired condition are adjustments necessary because it is not true. Who need adjust the truth which calls on only what he is to understand? Adjustments of any kind are of the ego, for it is the ego's fixed belief that all relationships depend upon adjustments to make of them what it would have them be. Direct relationships in which there are no interferences are always seen as dangerous. The ego is the self-appointed mediator of all relationships, making whatever adjustments it deems necessary, and interposing them between those who would meet to keep them separate and prevent their union. It is this studied interference that makes it difficult for you to recognize your holy relationship for what it is. The holy do not interfere with truth. They are not afraid of it, for it is within the truth they recognize their holiness and rejoice at what they see. They look on it directly without attempting to adjust themselves to it or it to them. And so they see that it was in them not deciding first where they would have it be. They're looking merely ask a question and it is what they see that answers them. You make the world and then adjust to it and it to you. Nor is there any difference between yourself and it and your perception which made them both. A simple question yet remains and needs an answer. Do you like what you have made? A world of murder and attack through which you thread your timid way through constant dangers, alone and frightened, hoping at most that death will wait a little longer before it overtakes you and you disappear. You made this up. It is a picture of what you think you are, of how you see yourself. A murderer is frightened and those who kill fear death. All these are but the fearful thoughts of those who would adjust themselves to a world made fearful by their adjustments. And they look out in sorrow from what is said within and see the sadness there. Have you not wondered what the world is really like? How it would look through happy eyes? The world you see is but a judgment on yourself. It is not there at all. Yet judgment lays a sentence on it, justifies it and makes it real. Such is the world you see. A judgment on yourself and made by you. This sickly picture of yourself is carefully preserved by the ego whose image it is and which it loves and placed outside you in the world. And to this world must you adjust as long as you believe this picture is outside and has you at its mercy. This world is merciless and where it outside you, you should indeed be fearful. Yet it was you who made it merciless and now if mercilessness seems to look back at you, it can be corrected. Who in a holy relationship can long remain unholy? The world the holy see is one with them, just as the world the ego looks upon is like itself. The world the holy see is beautiful because they see their innocence in it. They did not tell it what it was. They did not make adjustments to fit their orders. They gently questioned it and whispered, What are you? And he who watches over all perception answered, Take not the judgment of the world as an answer to the question, What am I? The world believes in sin, but the belief that made it as you see it is not outside you. Seek not to make the Son of God adjust to his insanity. There is a stranger in him who wandered carelessly into the home of truth and who will wander off. He came without a purpose, but he will not remain before the shining light the Holy Spirit offered and you accepted. For there the stranger is made homeless and you are welcome. Ask not this transient stranger, What am I? He is the only thing in all the universe that does not know. Yet it is he you ask and it is to his answer that you would adjust. This one wild thought, fierce in its arrogance and yet so tiny and so meaningless that slips unnoticed through the universe of truth, becomes your guide. To it you turn to ask the meaning of the universe and of the one blind thing in all the seeing universe of truth, you ask, How shall I look upon the Son of God? Does one ask judgment of what is totally bereft of judgment and if you have would you believe the answer and adjust to it as if it were the truth? The world you look on is the answer that it gave and you have given it power to adjust the world to make its answer true. You ask this puff of madness for the meaning of your unholy relationship and adjusted it according to its insane answer. How happy did it make you? Did you meet with joy to bless the Son of God and give him thanks for all the happiness that he held out to you? Did you recognize your brother as the eternal gift of God to you? Did you see the holiness that's shown in both of you to bless the other? That is the purpose of your holy relationship. Ask not the means of its attainment of the one thing that still would have it be unholy. Give it no power to adjust the means and then. Prisoners bound with heavy chains for years, starved and emaciated, weak and exhausted, with eyes so long cast down in darkness they remember not the light. Do not leap up, enjoy the instant they are made free. It takes a while for them to understand what freedom is. You groped but feebly in the dust and found your brother's hand uncertain whether to let it go or take hold on life so long forgotten. Strengthen your hold and raise your eyes unto your strong companion in whom the meaning of your freedom lies. He seemed to be crucified beside you and yet his holiness remained untouched and perfect. With him beside you you shall this day enter with him to paradise and know the peace of God. Such is my will for you and for each of you, for one another and for himself. Here there is only holiness and joining without limit. For what is heaven but union, direct and perfect and without the veil of fear upon it? Here we are one, looking with perfect gentleness upon each other and on ourselves. Here all thoughts of any separation between us become impossible. You who were prisoners in separation are now made free in paradise. And here would I unite with you, my friends, my brothers and myself. Your gift unto your brother has given me the certainty our union will be soon. Share then this faith with me and know that it is justified. There is no fear and perfect love because it knows no sin and it must look on others as on itself. Looking with charity within, what can it fear without? The innocence see safety and the pure in heart see God within his son and look unto the son to lead them to the father. And where else would they go but where they will to be? Each of you now will lead the other to the father as surely as God created his son holy and kept him so. In your brother is the light of God's eternal promise of your immortality. See him as sinless and there can be no fear in you. And from the workbook, lesson 160, I am at home. Fear is the stranger here. Fear is a stranger to the ways of love. Identify with fear and you will be a stranger to yourself. And thus you are unknown to you. What is yourself remains an alien to the part of you which thinks that it is real but different from yourself. Who could be sane in such a circumstance? Who but a madman could believe he is what he is not and judge against himself? There is a stranger in our midst who comes from an idea so foreign to the truth he speaks a different language. Looks upon a world truth does not know and understands what truth regards as senseless. Stranger yet he does not recognize to whom he comes and yet maintains his home belongs to him while he is alien now who is at home. And yet how easy it would be to say this is my home. Here I belong and will not leave because a madman says I must. What reason is there for not saying this? What could the reason be except that you had asked this stranger in to take your place and let you be a stranger to yourself? No one would let himself be dispossessed so needlessly unless he thought there were another home more suited to his taste. Who is the stranger? Is it fear or you that is unsuited to the home which God provided for his son? Is fear his own created in his likeness? Is it fear that love completes and is completed by? There is no home can shelter love and fear. They cannot coexist. If you are real, then fear must be an illusion. And if fear is real, then you do not exist at all. How simply then the question is resolved. Who fears has but denied himself and said I am the stranger here and so I leave my home to one more like me than myself and give him all I thought belonged to me? Now is he exiled of necessity, not knowing who he is, uncertain of all things but this, that he has not himself and that his home has been denied to him. What does he search for now? What can he find? A stranger to himself can find no home wherever he may look, for he has made return impossible. His way is lost except a miracle will search him out and show him that he is no stranger now. The miracle will come. For in his home his self remains. It asked no stranger in and took no alien thought to be itself and it will call its own unto itself in recognition of what is its own. Who is the stranger? Is he not the one your self calls not? You are unable now to recognize the stranger in your mist for you have given him your rightful place yet is your self as certain of its own as God is of his son. He cannot be confused about creation. He is sure of what belongs to him. No stranger can be interposed between his knowledge and his son's reality. He does not know of strangers. He is certain of his son. God's certainty suffices. Who he knows to be his son belongs where he has set his son forever. He has answered you who ask, who is the stranger? Hear his voice assure you quietly and surely that you are not a stranger to your father nor is your creator stranger made to you. Whom God has joined remain forever one at home in him no stranger to himself. Today we offer thanks that Christ has come to search the world for what belongs to him. His vision sees no strangers but beholds his own and joyously unites with them. They see him as a stranger where they do not recognize themselves yet as they give him welcome they remember and he leads them gently home again where they belong. Not one does Christ forget. Not one he fails to give you to remember that your home may be complete and perfect as it was established. He has not forgotten you but you will not remember him until you look on all as he does who denies his brother is denying him and that's refusing to accept the gift of sight by which his self is clearly recognized, his home remembered and salvation come. Amen.