'Our Religion'

 

'Our Religion'

131:10.1 (1453.3)After the great effort of putting together this compilation of the world religions' teaching on the Paradise Father, Ganid set to work formulating what he considered a summary of the beliefs concerning God to which he had come through the teaching of Jesus. The young man was in the habit of referring to these beliefs as “our religion. Here is what he wrote down:

131:10.2 (1453.4)'The Lord our God is one Lord, and you must love him with all your mind and heart, doing your utmost to love all his children as yourself. This one God is our heavenly Father in whom all things exist and who dwells by His Spirit in every sincere human soul. And we who are the children of God must learn to entrust our souls to him as to a faithful Creator. With our heavenly Father, all things are possible. Since he is the Creator and made all things and all beings, it could not be otherwise. Although we cannot see God, we can know him. And by living daily according to the Father's will, we can reveal him to our fellow men.

131:10.3 (1453.5)'The divine riches of God's character must be infinitely deep and eternally wise. We cannot fathom God with our knowledge, but we can know him in our hearts through our personal experience. Even though his righteousness is beyond all comprehension, even the humblest man on earth can receive his grace. As the Father fills the universe, he also dwells in our hearts. Man's consciousness is human, mortal, but man's spirit is divine, immortal. God is not only all-powerful, but also all-wise. If our earthly parents, yet inclined to evil, can love their children and bestow good gifts upon them, how much more must the good Father in heaven love his children on earth with wisdom and bestow appropriate blessings upon them.

131:10.4 (1454.1)'The Father in heaven will not allow even one of his children to perish on earth if that child has a desire to find the Father and truly desires to be like him. Our Father loves even the wicked and is always lenient toward the ungrateful. If only more people could know of the goodness of God, they would certainly want to repent of their bad ways of life and give up all known sin. All good things descend from the Father of the Light, in whom there is no mutability, nor hint of reversal. The spirit of the true God is in man's heart. His intention is that all men will be brothers. When people begin to grope for God, it proves that he has found them, and that they are seeking knowledge about him. We live in God and God dwells in us.

131:10.5 (1454.2)'It will no longer be enough for me to believe that God is the Father of all my people: from now on I will believe that he is also my Father. I will always seek to worship God with the help of the Spirit of Truth, who is my helper when I have become truly God-knowing. But in first of all, I am going to practice to worship God by learning to do God's will on earth; that is, I am going to do my best to deal with every fellow human being exactly as I think God would want me to. And when we live this kind of life in the flesh, we may ask many things of God, and he will fulfill the desire of our heart, so that we will be all the better able to serve our fellow men. And all this loving serving of the children of God, increases our ability to receive and experience the joys of heaven, the high pleasures of the service of the spirit of heaven.

131:10.6 (1454.3)'I will thank God every day for his unspeakable gifts; I will praise him for his wonderful works to the children of men. To me he is the Almighty, the Creator, the Power and the Mercy, but the most beautiful thing is that he is my spirit-Father, and as his earthly child I will go out once to see him. And my teacher has said that by seeking Him, I will become as He is. By faith in God, I have found peace with him. This new religion of ours is very joyful and brings lasting happiness. I trust that I will be faithful even unto death, and will surely receive the crown of eternal life.

131:10.7 (1454.4)'I am now learning to examine all things and to adhere to what is good. All that I would have people do for me, I will do for my fellow men. By this new faith I know that man can become a son of God; however, sometimes it frightens me to think that all men are my brothers, but it must be true. I do not see how I can rejoice in the fatherhood of God while refusing to accept the brotherhood of men. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. If that is true, then all men must be my brethren.

131:10.8 (1454.5)'From now on I will do my good works in secret; also I will pray most when I am alone. I will not judge, so as not to be unfair to my fellow men. I am going to learn to love my enemies; I have not yet really mastered this exercise of being God-like. Although I detect God in these other religions, I find that in “our religion” his beauty comes out better, that here he is more loving, more merciful, more personal and more positive. But above all, this grand, glorious Being is my spiritual Father: I am His child. And by no other means than my honest desire to be like Him will I finally find and eternally serve Him. At last I have a religion with a God, a wonderful God, and he is a God who preserves forever.

A Thought for Consideration from The Urantia Book            

The Second Garden

The Second Court

76:0.1 (847.1)WHEN Adam chose to leave the first Court to the Nodites without resistance, he and his followers could not move west, for the Edenites had no ships suitable for such an adventure at sea. They could not go north, for the northern Nodites were already marching on Eden. They were afraid to go south: the hills of that region were infested with hostile tribes. The only road open was to the east, and so they marched eastward to the then pleasant regions between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Many of those who were left behind also later moved eastward in order to join the Adamites in their new home in the valley.

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The Dawn Races of The Early Man

The early lemurs involved in the ancestry of the human race were not directly related to the pre-existing gibbon and ape tribes then living in Eurasia and North Africa, whose descendants have survived to the present day. Nor did they descend from the present type of lemurs, although they had a common ancestor, which, however, has since long since died out. 62:1.2 (703.3)These early lemurs evolved in the western hemisphere, but the establishment of the genus of mammals that would form the direct ancestry of mankind took place in southwest Asia, in the original area of central life-implantation but along the borders of the eastern regions. Some millions of years ago, lemurs of the North American type had migrated west across the Bering land bridge and moved slowly along the Asian coast to the southwest. These migrating tribes finally reached the healthy region between the then larger Mediterranean Sea and the rising mountain ranges of the Indian Peninsula. In these regions west of India they united with other favorable races and thus established the ancestry of the human race.

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Gods Relation to The Universe

In Treatise Four of the Urantia book, it talks about God's relationship to the Universe and also talks about how we, people on Urantia are still under the influence of primitive God image understanding and that we still cling to what our ancestors understood when it comes to who God the Father is. God is pure Love and not a father of vengeance and attraction and repulsion as we read throughout the Old Testament. This treatise also says that all the books that are supposedly “holy” are based on myths because our forefathers were fond of myths. Now we will get a clearer and clearer picture about the Bible and all these other books and the stories described in them and have a question mark over what we read whether it is really from God and if so whether it is correctly understood and written down or expressed to us the descendants.

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The Supreme Lordship of God the Father

 

The supreme dominion of the Father

3:5.1 (50.6)In his contact with the creations that arose after Havona, the Universal Father exercises his infinite power and supreme authority not by asserting it directly, but rather through his Sons and the personalities subordinate to them. And God does all this of His own free will. If occasion should arise, if divine thought should prefer it, all delegated power could also be exercised directly, but as a rule such action takes place only if the delegated personality has failed to accomplish what God has entrusted to him. At such times, when faced with such negligence, the Father does act independently and in accordance with the precepts he himself has chosen, always remaining within the limits of what he has reserved for himself in terms of divine power and potential, and his choice is always of unfailing perfection and infinite wisdom.

3:5.2 (51.1)The Father rules through His Sons: there runs through the organization of the universe from high to low an unbroken chain of rulers, ending with the Planetary Sovereigns who are in charge of the destiny of the evolutionary worlds in the Father's awesome domains. 'The earth is the Lord's and its fullness.' 'He sets down kings and raises kings to thrones.' 'The Most Exalted reign in the kingdoms of men.' These exclamations are not merely expressions of poetic nature....

3:5.3 (51.2)In the affairs of the hearts of men things may not always go as the Father wills, but in the reign over and vis-à-vis the destiny of a planet the divine plan wins: the eternal intention of wisdom and love triumphs.

3:5.4 (51.3)Jesus said, “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand. When you catch a glimpse of what is going on in many areas of God's well-nigh infinite creation, and catch sight of its overwhelming immensity, it is possible that your understanding of his primacy may be shaken, but you must accept as certain that he is eternally enthroned in the Paradise center of all things, and that he is the beneficent Father of all thinking beings. There is only “one God and Father of all, who is above all and in all,” and “he is before all things and all things exist in him.

3:5.5 (51.4)The uncertainties of life and the vicissitudes of existence in no way contradict the idea of the universal sovereignty of God. The life of all evolutionary creatures is surrounded by certain inevitabilities. Will consider the following:

3:5.6 (51.5)1. Is courage - strength of character - desirable? If so, man must be raised in an environment that requires him to wrestle with hardships and respond to disappointments.

3:5.7 (51.6)2. Is altruism - serving one's fellow man - desirable? If so, life experience must be such that one must also cope with conditions of social inequality.

3:5.8 (51.7)3. Is hope - the greatness of trust - desirable? Then human existence must be constantly confronted with risks and ever-recurring uncertainties.

3:5.9 (51.8)4. Is faith - the highest assertion to which human thought can come - desirable? That must be human consciousness in the difficult circumstance that it always knows less, than it can believe.

3:5.10 (51.9)5. Is love of truth and a willingness to go wherever it leads desirable? If so, man must grow up in a world where error is available and lies are always possible.

3:5.11 (51.10)6. Is idealism-the daytime understanding of the divine-desirable? If so, man must struggle in an environment of relatable goodness and beauty that stimulates the irresistible pursuit of the better.

3:5.12 (51.11)7. Is faithfulness - the highest performance of duty - desirable? Then man must persevere amid the possibilities of infidelity and apostasy. The heroism of dutifulness consists in the implied danger of negligence.

3:5.13 (51.12)8. Is altruism-the spiritual institution of selflessness-desirable? If so, mortal man must live in confrontation with an inescapable self that ceaselessly cries out for recognition and honor. Man could not dynamically choose the divine life, if there were no ego-life to renounce. Man could never make saving righteousness his own, if there were no potential evil as a contrast to elevate and make the good more evident.

3:5.14 (51.13)9. Is pleasure - the satisfaction of happiness - desirable? Then man must live in a world where the alternative of pain and the probability of suffering are ever-present experiential possibilities.

3:5.15 (52.1)Throughout the universe, each unit is considered a part of the whole. The survival of the part depends on its cooperation with the plan and intention of the whole, its sincere desire and utter willingness to do the divine will of the Father. The only evolutionary world without error (the possibility of unwise judgment) would be a world without free intelligence. The Havona universe has a billion perfect worlds with their perfect inhabitants, but evolutionary man must be fallible if he is to be free. The free but still inexperienced intelligence cannot initially be wise across the board with any possibility. The possibility of wrong judgment (evil) becomes sin only when man knowingly endorses and accepts a deliberately immoral judgment.

3:5.16 (52.2)The full appreciation of truth, beauty and goodness is inherent in the perfection of the divine universe. The inhabitants of the Havona worlds do not need the potential evil associated with the relative levels of value as an incentive to make choices: these perfect beings are able to recognize and choose the good even without contrasting moral situations that call for reflection. But all these perfect beings are as they are, in terms of moral nature and spiritual status, merely by virtue of the fact that they exist. They have merely acquired experiential progress within their inherent status. Mortal man even earns his status as a candidate for the way up through his own faith and hope. All the divinity that human thought understands and the human soul acquires is attained through experience; it is a reality of personal experience and is therefore a unique possession, unlike the inherent goodness and righteousness of the infallible personalities of Havona.

3:5.17 (52.3)The creatures of Havona are naturally brave, but they are not oodish in the human sense. Kindness and courtesy are innate to them, but one can hardly call them altruistic, as humans can be. They expect a pleasant future, but do not live in hope, as the mortal on the uncertain evolutionary worlds can do so confidently and exquisitely. They believe in the stability of the universe, but the saving faith by which mortal man ascends from the status of an animal to the gates of Paradise is utterly unknown to them. They love the truth, but know nothing of those qualities of truth that preserve the soul. They are idealists, but they are born that way; the rapture with which one develops into an idealist by one's own stimulating choice is totally unknown to them. They are faithful, but have never felt the excitement of sincere, intelligent devotion to duty when faced with the temptation to abandon one's duty. They are selfless, but have not reached this level of experience through the lustrous victory over a belligerent self. They know pleasure, but do not understand the sweetness of pleasure as a means of escape from the potential of pain. A Thought for Consideration from The Urantia Book

Progress through Character Development

 

Progress through Character Development

28:6.14 (316.1)On Urantia you grotesquely attempt to fathom one's character and estimate one's specific abilities, but on Uversa we actually do this in perfection. These seconaphim weigh your trustworthiness on the living scales of flawless character assessment, and when they have looked at you, we need only look at them to know the limits of your ability to carry responsibility, perform the tasks entrusted to you and accomplish missions. Your assets to trustworthiness are clearly plotted against your liabilities to possible negligence or treachery.

28:6.15 (316.2)Your superiors plan to advance you by entrusting you with increasingly onerous tasks once your character has developed sufficiently to carry these greater responsibilities with grace, but putting too much on someone's shoulders only asks for mischief and is sure to end in disappointment. And the mistake of prematurely burdening a person or angel with responsibility can be avoided by employing the services of these angels who can unfailingly assess the ability of individual personalities in time and space to fulfill their entrusted tasks. These seconaphim always accompany the High Commanders, and these directors never appoint candidates until they have been weighed on the scales of these seconaphim and found to be “not too light.

28:6.16 (316.3)5. The Sanctity of Service. Immediately after a person is found to be trustworthy, the privilege of serving falls to him. Nothing can stand between you and the possibility of increased service but your own unreliability, your defective ability to appreciate the high seriousness of a task entrusted to you.

28:6.17 (316.4)Service - intentional service, not slavery - gives the highest satisfaction and is the expression of the most divine dignity. Service - increased service, increasing service, difficult service, adventurous service, and finally divine, perfect service - is the goal of time and the destination of space. But always the periods of service and progress in time will be alternated by periods of play. And after the service in time follows the super-service in eternity. During the play in time you should imagine the work in eternity, just as during the service in eternity you will think back to the play in time.

28:6.18 (316.5)The universal economy is based on absorption and production; throughout your eternal career you will encounter the monotony of inactivity or the stagnation of personality. Progress is made possible by inherent motion, progress springs from the divine capacity for acitvity, and achievement is the child of imaginative adventure. But inherent in this capacity for achievement is the responsibility of ethics, the need to recognize that the world and the universe are filled with a multitude of beings of different types. This entire magnificent creation, yourself included, was not made just for you. This is not a self-centered universe. The Gods have decreed, “It is more blissful to give than to receive,” and your Master-Son has said, “Whoever wishes to be the greatest among you, be all servants.

28:6.19 (316.6)The true nature of any service, whether rendered by man or angel, is fully revealed in the face of these secoraphimic designators of service, the Sanctities of Service. The full analysis of your true and hidden motives is clearly displayed. These angels are indeed the mind readers, the investigators of hearts, and the revelators of souls in the universe. Mortals may use words to hide their thoughts, but these high seconafines expose the deepest motives of the human heart and consciousness of angels.

A Thought for Consideration from The Urantia Book

Fatherly and Brotherly Love

 

Fatherly and brotherly love

140:5.1 (1573.3)From the Sermon on the Mount to the speech at the Last Supper, Jesus taught his followers to show fatherly love rather than brotherly love. In brotherly love you love your neighbor as yourself, which would be an adequate observance of the “golden rule. But paternal love demands that you love your fellow mortals as Jesus loves you.

140:5.2 (1573.4)Jesus loved humanity in two ways. He lived on earth as a dual personality-human and divine. As the Son of God, he loves man with a fatherly love - he is man's Creator, his universe-Father. As the Son of Man, Jesus loves mortals like a brother - he was truly a man among men.

140:5.3 (1573.5)Jesus did not expect his followers to achieve an impossible manifestation of brotherly love, but rather that they would so strive to be like God - perfect, as well as the Father in heaven is perfect - that they could begin to see man as God sees his creatures, and therefore love men as God loves them - to exhibit the fledgling beginnings of fatherly love. In the course of these exhortations to the twelve apostles, Jesus sought to reveal this new understanding of fatherly love in its connection with certain emotional attitudes that play a role in many social improvements in the environment.

140:5.4 (1573.6)The Master introduced this weighty discourse by drawing attention to four attitudes of faith, as a prelude to the subsequent description of his four transcendent, supreme responses of paternal love, as opposed to the limitations of mere brotherly love.

140:5.5 (1573.7)He spoke first of those who were poor in spirit, hungered for righteousness, persevered in meekness, and were pure in heart. Such spirit-distinguished mortals could be expected to reach such levels of divine selflessness, that they would be able to pursue the amazing pursuit of paternal love; that even as mourners they would find strength to show mercy, promote peace and endure persecution, and in all these difficult situations love even the unlovable humanity with a fatherly love. Fatherly love can reach heights of devotion that immeasurably exceed brotherly love.

140:5.6 (1573.8)The faith and love of these beatitudes strengthen moral character and create happiness. Fear and anger weaken character and destroy happiness. This weighty speech began in the key of happiness.

140:5.7 (1573.9)1. Happy are the poor in spirit - the humble. To a child, happiness means the satisfaction of the desire for instantaneous pleasure. The adult is willing to sow the seeds of self-denial in order to then reap greater happiness. In the time of Jesus and after, happiness has too often been linked to the idea of possessing wealth. In the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the temple, one felt rich in spirit - full of self-doubt; the other felt “poor in spirit” - humble. One was complacent; the other was studious and seeking truth. The poor in spirit seek purposes of spiritual riches - to God. And such seekers of truth need not wait for a reward in the distant future; they are rewarded now. They find the kingdom of heaven in their own hearts, and they experience this happiness now.

140:5.8 (1574.1)2. "Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Only those who feel poor in spirit will ever hunger for righteousness. Only the humble seek divine strength and crave spiritual power. But it is very dangerous to deliberately fast spiritually in order to become more desirous of spiritual gifts. Physical fasting becomes dangerous after four or five days; one easily loses all desire for food. Long fasting, physical or spiritual, usually destroys hunger.

140:5.9 (1574.2)Experiential justice is a pleasure, not a duty. Jesus' justice is a dynamic love - fatherly-brotherly love. She is not the negative, “thou shalt not” type of justice.

140:5.10 (1574.3)It is not so easy to teach these first two Beatitudes to a child, but a mature consciousness should be able to grasp their meaning.

140:5.11 (1574.4)3 "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. True meekness is not related to fear. Rather, it is an attitude of man cooperating with God - “Thy will be done. It involves patience and forbearance and is driven by an unshakable faith in a lawful and kind universe. It overcomes all temptation to rebel against divine guidance. Jesus was the ideal gentle man of Urantia, and he inherited a vast universe.

140:5.12 (1574.5)4. "Happy are those who are pure in heart, for they will see God. Spiritual purity is not a negative trait except in the sense that it lacks distrust and vindictiveness. In discussing purity, Jesus did not intend to deal exclusively with human attitutdes toward sexuality. He was referring more to the faith man must have in his fellow man: the faith a parent has in his child that enables him to love his fellow men as a father would. A father's love need not be indulgent and it does not condone evil, but it is always anti-cynical. Fatherly love is directed to one goal only and always seeks the best in man: this is the disposition of the true parent.

140:5.13 (1574.6)To see God - by faith - means to gain true spiritual insight. And spiritual insight increases the guidance of the Richter, and together these ultimately increase God-consciousness. And when you know the Father, you are confirmed in the assurance of your divine sonship and can love each of your brothers in the flesh more and more, not only as a brother - with brotherly love - but also as a father - with fatherly affection.

140:5.14 (1574.7)This exhortation is easy to explain even to a child. Children are naturally full of faith, and parents should take care not to lose this simple faith. When dealing with children, avoid all deception and do not instill mistrust in them. Help them wisely to choose their heroes and their life's work.

140:5.15 (1574.8)Then Jesus went on to teach his followers about the achievement of the main goal of all human struggle - perfection, even the acquisition of divinity. Again and again he exhorted them, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. He did not call the twelve to love their neighbor as they loved themselves. This would have been a valuable achievement: it would have been proof that they had made brotherly love their own. But rather, he urged his apostles to love people as he had loved them - to love with both paternal and fraternal affection. And he explained this by wise on four supreme responses of paternal love:

140:5.16 (1575.1)1. "Happy are those who grieve, for they shall be comforted. Neither so-called common sense nor the best logic could ever argue that happiness can be derived from sorrow. But Jesus was not referring to outward or ostentatious grieving; he was alluding to the emotional disposition of tender-heartedness. It is a great error to teach boys and young men that it is unmanly to be tender-hearted or otherwise show affection or physical suffering. Compassion is a worthy trait of both men and women. It is not necessary to be insensitive in order to be masculine. This is the wrong way to present brave men. The great men of the earth have not been afraid to grieve. Moses, he who grieved, was a greater man than Samson or Goliath. Moses was a brilliant leader, but he was also a gentle man. Sensitivity and receptivity to human distress creates real and lasting happiness, while such gentleness protects the soul from the destructive influence of anger, hatred and suspicion.

140:5.17 (1575.2)2. "Happy are the merciful, for mercy will be shown to them. Mercy here indicates the height, depth and breadth of the most sincere friendship - kindness. Mercy can sometimes be passive, but here it is active and dynamic, supreme fatherliness. A loving parent has little trouble forgiving his child, even many times. And in an unsaved child, the impulse to relieve suffering is natural. Children are normally kind and compassionate when they are old enough to realize the actual circumstances.

140:5.18 (1575.3)3. "Happy are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. Jesus' hearers longed for military deliverance, not peacemakers. But Jesus' peace is not of the pacifist and negative kind. Faced with trial and persecution, he said, “My peace I leave with you. 'Let not your hearts be troubled, nor be afraid.' This is the peace that prevents disastrous conflict. Personal peace integrates personhood. Social peace prevents fear, greed and anger. Political peace prevents racial conflict, national distrust and war. Founding peace is the cure for distrust and suspicion.

140:5.19 (1575.4)Children can easily learn to become peacemakers. They like to do something as a team; they enjoy playing with each other. On another occasion the Master said, “Whoever will want to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever will want to lose his life will find it.

140:5.20 (1575.5)4. 'Happy are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Happy are ye when men shall scorn and persecute you, and shall speak all manner of evil of you unjustly. Be glad and rejoice greatly, for great is your reward in heaven.

140:5.21 (1575.6)Very often peace is indeed persecuted. But young people and brave adults never shun difficulties and dangers. “No one has greater love, than to dedicate his life to his friends. And a fatherly love can do all this freely - things that brotherly love can hardly encompass. And progress has always been the ultimate harvest of persecution.

140:5.22 (1575.7)Children always respond when their courage is challenged. Youth are always ready to “take a chance. And every child must learn early on to be able to deny himself something.

140:5.23 (1575.8)And so it is revealed that the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount are grounded in faith and love, and not in laws - ethics and duty.

140:5.24 (1575.9)Fatherly love delights in repaying evil with good - doing good in retaliation for injustice.

A Thought for Consideration from The Urantia Book