Letter to The Editor

     Greg Sheridan is right to praise the integrity and courage of Pastor Wang Yi ("Pastor endures Chinese persecution with fortitude", 20/12) and the pastor is right, in his public statement of faith, to stress that the primary goal of the Church is "to testify about another world, to prove to the world its real existence."

     Unfortunately this noble man, in his steadfast and balanced personal witness against tyranny, has associated openness to higher understanding with an outdated theology involving claims about "the redemption of Christ" as "the only means by which persons may be saved" and enabled to avoid "eternal damnation in hell.' Quite simply, that is a misreading, expressed in the terminology of this world, of biblical teachings that are really concerned with the raising of human consciousness through a "second birth" that involves escape from our everyday personality. Heroism without insight, alas, amounts to "the blind leading the blind."

     Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic.