10 Living in Revolution
the essential area of experience with which Christianity is
chiefly concerned. The term religion refers, not to something
new dragged into life from outside, but to something al-
ready there, a dimly-recognized part of the landscape be-
fore it is understood as religion. It is like the mysterious
power of electricity which was known to everyone who
combed his hair on a cold morning, long before the scientists
named and explained its nature. When two people honestly
accept each other’s claim for attention, by which we enter
each other’s world and share what we have with each other,
we realize that everyone else encounters us with that same
claim. We meet it everywhere, and when we reject it some-
thing is lost in the lives that fail to meet. That loss when
multiplied in many instances affects many people, disrupts
links in society, and prevents mutual exchange until fatal
divisions occur. This demand to be known and appreciated
has something universal and inescapable about it. Private
happiness, personal effectiveness, and all the affairs of the
world focus at this center. For the divine demand to get
together meets us in every meeting with a person who de-
serves to be known and understood.
The love of God is not something up in the sky in some-
body’s imaginary heart up there. It is this living demand,
reaching us in concrete situations. “Inasmuch as ye have
done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have
done it unto me,” was Jesus’ formula for religion. In His
famous parable of the Judgment, the “goats” who were
separated from God were the righteous people who failed
to recognize, in persons all around them, this universal
call to be understood. Love is not simply a nice feeling
towards other people, which cannot be forced when the
people are unlovable. Love is where we meet the invita-
tion of any sort of person to enter his life at the point of
his real need, whatever that may be. If some satisfactory