In “The Gospel According to Spiritism”, chapter I the title “I have not come to destroy the law”, from The Gospel according Mathew 5, 17:18, Allan Kardec writes a didactic plan of studies related to the historical process of the revelations. He takes them from the tradicional texts, or better, of the pure and simple adoration of the biblical texts for a rational and coherent analisys with the philosophical and scientific progress that human being has ever reached in his time.
Soon after Socrates and Plato’s studies (both philophers are considered by Kardec the forerunners of Christianity and Spiritism), in this first chapter, he sets close linkings with the laws affirmed by the High Spirits and transmitted to Moses, the teachings brought by Jesus and finally the Spiritism combining purposes and intentions focused on human moral and spiritual education of all times.
We learned from Spiritism that the Bible, in the Old Testament, although teaches us moral and ethic, mainly in the Ten Commandments, Jesus changes to just two ideas: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We also learn with Allan Kardec that what is highligted in the New Testament are Jesus’s moral teachings and that Doctrine Spiritist demystifies, explains, broadens and proposes as a code of behavior and that joins creature and creator in a racional and coherent way.
Thus it is a new vision of human religious without believing in temples, rituals, sacrifices, ceremonies, as usual, beyond of static and stagnated power structures.
Accordingly without looking down the value of some missionaries whose spirit nowadays is found in Non Governamental Organizations like “Doctors without Borders” (Médecins sans Frontiers) and some others the Spiritism emphasizes the spirit of religiosity that is transformed in action by solidarity.
Another example is a north-american photographer and filmmaker called James Balog who has been reporting the polar defrosting, mainly related to the last Antarctic event when there was a huge drift of an ice plataform named Larsen C which set apart from the continent and goes on moving and being fragmented in thousands of icebergs towards the Oceans. His work was shown in “City and Solutions” an ecological TV program by Andre Trigueiro, a spiritist journalist and ecologist.
On the other hand Spiritism provided us a Faith based on reason because it is based on knowledgment and as proposes the Spiritist Philosophy, puts away superstitious with its fears, frustrations, and insecurities that makes our life become a great deal of pain.
That is why many people look for the Psychology to help them with their mental disorders. Although Psychology is not a panacea for all ills it has been playing an important and necessary role in our society.
Therefore, it has its limitations, restrictions and specific indications, mainly when it does not admit the existence of the imortal Spirit with his thousands of reincarnations (Regional Council of Psychology).
Therefore, it is important that the Spiritist Philosophy (see The Spirits’ Book) be the way we should follow, and that The Gospel According to Spiritism be our everyday guide and the other books by Allan Kardec be really the Consoler promised by Jesus in theory and practice.
Moses did not founded any religion, as legislator, provided rules and codes of behavior and social behavior, and respect God and other cultures.
Jesus highlighted the main points of the Ten Commandments, but summarized, as said before, in two: love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself, as who loves respect. Respect God, yourself and the others, or better, life in any ways it is expressed.
Spiritism recognizes the spiritual and moral values of the two teachings and updating them encouraging the Good with reason and objectivity.
Therefore, the three revelations that Herculano Pires (spiritist philosopher) names as “conceptual syntheses” based on Kardec and Léon Denis, summarizes all the process humankind has been through searching for the meaning of life, why do we exist and all the questions involved in our relationships.
It is the Spiritist Philosophy that investigates, asks, searches and brings coherent and objective answers.
In 2600 years of history of Philosophy, the human being searched for the Truth. But only Jesus revealed it, or better, the existence of the imortal Spirit that overcomes all human, all sufferings, all the joy of our corporeal life which works for us just to learning.
And it is Spiritism, promised by Jesus, that makes us free from our mental and spiritual prisons, giving us power to our life, and that power brings us responsibility over our thoughts and actions.
When Jesus says “I have not come to destroy the law” in the first chapter of Gospel According to Spiritism, he talks to Divine Laws, not to Moses human laws in the Old Testament that would have changes over time and the development of Science.
When Jesus teaches Nicodemus that it is necessary be born from water and Spirit, he is talking about reincarnation, since water was the prime substance that pre-Socratic philosophers in ancient times believed to be the key element where all the things were originated.
For that reason, Jesus’s first teaching about reincarnation – that was already known by ancient peoples – was scientifically proved by Kardec and nowadays has been investigating in research centers as past lives therapy, memory regression in Brazil at Juiz de Fora University in Minas Gerais. In São Paulo at INTVP (Past Life Therapy Nacional Institute) a reasearcher called Julio Peres took part in one of our public event named Café Filosófico-Espírita organized by us and supported by Centro Espirita Nosso Lar, and also at Duke University in North Caroline among others.
The specific item in this chapter, The New Era, it is not related to the movements of new age from the USA which came up in the 1980s, nor even the self help movements that invade Brazilian religions today. Perhaps Jesus’s teachings were not enough…
The writer of this chapter that signs as A Israeli Spirit refers to the historical moment as the full assimilation of Jesus’s teachings helped by Spiritism; this time in the future, after post-modernity period that we have lived now, called mystical transition period, but it is merely a natural transformation that happens little by little in human consciences from now on, as they are part of the Law of Progress.
We recommend the reading and the reflection of this key passage from the Gospel According to Spiritism.
Written by Sonia Theodoro da Silva – Philosopher
Translated by Salete Martins Herance
