Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/2898

2898 Spiritual freedom.... new teaching in compulsion....

September 26, 1943: Book 37

Only complete spiritual freedom can guarantee higher development, whereas spiritual bondage has extremely serious consequences. And this is why the human being must try to free himself from the control of those who want to make him spiritually unfree insofar as that they want to impart a school of thought to him and force him to accept it. Every doctrine that is put into a form and made compulsory for people is a spiritual bondage that cannot be warned against enough. People's thinking is illegally forced into a path that need not lead upwards, and acceptance of the teachings is made dependent on punishment or reward. The human being should be able to decide completely freely about himself; the teaching of love of Christ should be made accessible to him, but then he should be given complete freedom as to how he wants to relate to this teaching of love. Only then can it take effect in the way Jesus Christ taught it.... that the human being recognizes it as the divine teaching by the promises and their fulfilment as soon as he makes an effort to follow them. But if the fulfillment of the divine will is made a duty for him, then he will never again feel the blessing of the promises in himself. He will certainly live in accordance with the commandments, but he will not be driven to do so from within, instead his actions and thoughts will have been brought up and will therefore not bring about the spiritual progress he should consciously strive for. The human being must be completely independent and be able to develop freely both upwards and downwards, he must not be prevented from doing evil, just as he should not be driven to do good, for he should freely decide for good or evil himself, he should develop all good abilities within himself of his own accord and try to fight the bad within himself, then he will live in spiritual freedom and his upward development will no longer be endangered. But to want to impose a spiritual direction on a fellow human being, to want to determine him to adhere to it, is a great danger for the soul insofar as it now allows itself to be driven and does not take a mental stand on it itself. It then certainly fulfills what is made its duty but is constantly in a spiritual bondage, in a relationship of bondage to those who want to transfer their thinking onto others.... And such spiritual bondage will be striven for; people will be offered a doctrine and to a certain extent forced to profess this doctrine and only a few will resist and defend their spiritual freedom. Only a few will recognize it as the work of God's adversary and not allow themselves to be determined, and this refusal will initiate the battle of faith, and the freedom of faith will be infringed upon, the human being will constantly live in danger of being treated as an outsider and opponent who wants to preserve his spiritual freedom and believes himself entitled to make his own decision in matters of faith. And thus those will be regarded as enemies who are reluctant to accept ideas which are supposed to contribute towards people's ennoblement but which lead people astray. For truth can only be gained through free, uninfluenced thinking which is only turned towards God alone. However, it can never be the result of thinking which is forcibly directed towards a certain path, because the truth has to come from within, whereas this thinking is fed to people from outside. For even divine truth, which a person hears through his inner voice, must be recognized as truth by his fellow human being from within, even if it is presented to him as a teaching.... He must also come to terms with these teachings himself in complete freedom of will before they are recognized by him as truth, before his heart gives him information about them. Spiritual freedom is always the condition for spiritual progress, whereas spiritual compulsion leaves the human being's soul unimpressed and only controls the intellect, thus forcing the human being to think in a certain direction which people deem good and favorable for their plans. And it cannot be warned enough not to surrender spiritual freedom. The human being should decide for himself without any external influence because this alone is decisive for his higher development and every compulsion means a standstill or decline....

amen

Translated by Doris Boekers