Universality is the bane of all religions. It is the basic reasons all religions are either declining or misbehaving.

For spirituality to thrive it must be individual and universal at the same time. What is coming is a universal spirituality that is happily beyond our binary past. In effect, religions should fade into a common understanding that all individuals are precious and that life requires universal cooperation.

Crisis

This puts Christianity on the ropes. Sure, we have the force of fundamentalism. But that will pass as generations reject its confining ways.

We also have the conformism that enables us to play with religious symbols for power and profit, but this too will fade away.

We are headed for a secular solution that is universal in its ethics but entirely diverse and individual in other respects.

Agreement

We are moving toward a world that agrees on one thing that rules everything else. That one thing is that we practice universal tolerance, universal helpfulness, and universal democracy. Now is precisely the right time to arrive at this conclusion.

Making the earth more heavenly does not require a church that stated goal is to convert everyone to its way of thinking and doing. If churches survive, they will join the rest of the world in affirming values that make for progress for everyone.

Christianity should survive as a contributor to a universal consensus on nonviolence.

Aesthetics

There is nothing more ugly than Religious Extremism. It feeds violence. It promotes racism. It seeks to control freedom and choice.

Our ethic of the future should lead from universal values to expressions and actions that aim at truth and beauty.

If you think that sounds a bit like Jesus, it does. But this is the way past religious extremism.

The future will not place religions and creeds at the forefront.

Unification

Unification is the amorphous and transformative evidence of love that is good.

It is the birth of trust. That is the human quest.

Unification is the source of incredible pain and incredible joy. It is rarely considered as what it actually is. It is the obliteration of anything that divides and the achievement of a sort of bliss. It is the fruit of consciousness that is free. To understand this and accept it requires the very sea change that is underway.

We need have no fear about shedding religion. We need have no fear about giving up the smallness of binary thinking -- of seeing only two sides of anything. We need to accept ourselves as universal, as choosers whose lives are built on what we decide.

We are the authors of both good and not good. The decision is ours.