Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/4859

4859 Teachings in compulsion.... love in free will.... (cath.!)

March 15, 1950: Book 55

I don't want to give you a commandment, I only want to advice you what you should do for your soul. For even My teaching of love is not a commandment, because love has to be practiced of your own free will if it is to bring you success. A work of love also requires love in the human being's heart; the work alone can be carried out purely mechanically and will then also be evaluated accordingly. I never say to you: you must, but always: you shall.... A compulsion is a law, the non-fulfilment of which entails punishment. But I will not punish you if you transgress the law of love, because this is indeed a law in itself, i.e. adapted to My eternal order, but I, as the law giver Who is love Itself, will not punish you since this contradicts My love. I can only warn you to live without love, thus I advice you to shape yourselves into love in order to be able to enjoy bliss, which you will never feel without love. However, what you obey as a commandment will not bring you bliss.... Thus I am also an opponent of all compulsion, since freedom is the right of the being which emerged from Me. Admittedly, I also use coercion in the stage of the being before the incarnation, yet this coercion arises from love which could not win you back in any other way, which cannot procure your freedom in any other way but through coercion.... but unconsciously. But in the human stage you are aware of every state of compulsion. If your free will is curtailed it violates My eternal order, since I have given you free will which you can and should use at your own discretion.

And now judge for yourselves who violates My eternal order.... judge by observing where compulsion determines people's way of life. I cannot approve of coercion as a means of spiritual education, for no human being will strive to ascend under coercion. Therefore, where coercion is used for spiritual development you will be able to recognize anti-divine activity, and coercion is everywhere where a punishment is threatened or a reward is promised, for both are means of pressure which are intended to determine a person's way of life. And coercion is everywhere where organizations are formed which seek to bind their members by measures, thus making them unfree in their thinking and acting.... (17.3.1950) Coercion is also present where people are not tolerated to acquire knowledge elsewhere, that is, where they freely research out of themselves and seek to arrive at the truth. Every lack of freedom of the human will is not in accordance with My will, for what the human being will one day have to answer for also presupposes his freedom of will. Wherever people are obliged to live their way of life, through commandments or threats of all kinds, it is not My will which is represented but the will of the one who is My adversary and therefore your enemy, even though My name is spoken. For countless false doctrines and countless offences against My will arise from the impersonation of the will. A person's will may never be considered so infallibly right that thousands of people blindly follow it and don't use their will themselves or are forced to think and act against their will. Even My pure teaching conveyed to you from above may not be forcibly conveyed to people but they should freely decide for or against it of their own accord, but how much less a teaching which is no longer as unspoilt as I Myself preached it on earth. People must always be granted the duty and also the right to examine and judge spiritual knowledge given to them by fellow human beings. And if the pure teaching is preached it should be done with love, and the inner conviction will then let the teacher find the right words to win over his fellow human being, yet all coercion should be refrained from. The person who is willing to believe and seeks Me also recognizes Me and can believe with conviction; then he will also practice love of his own accord, yet no longer out of duty but out of love for Me, in Whom he believes.... Compulsion kills love, and then every work of love is merely a mechanical exercise which cannot be valued by Me. You shall love.... because every ascent makes love a condition; yet you will not be forced, nor can you be forced to do so, because then love would not be love.... Consider this well and then realize what an error the spreading of My teaching of love is on the path of denominational regulations.... Everything the human being does to attain eternal life presupposes freedom of will, thus no commandment may be given to him whose fulfilment is enforced by promise of reward or threat of punishment.... He shall only be instructed about My commandment of love, which alone is significant and on the fulfilment of which eternal life depends....

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers