Joshua Ben Joseph (Jesus) was born at noon, August 21, 7 B.C.

Bringing the Son of God incarnate into the world is no small undertaking. Believing it actually happened, two thousand years after the fact is an even bigger challenge. And yet, that is what is expected of us. But the challenge can be met when one has sufficient information concerning the event. From Paper 122, Birth And Infancy of Jesus, from The Urantia Book:

After a study of the special report on the status of segregated worlds prepared by the Melchizedeks, in counsel with Gabriel, Michael finally chose Urantia as the planet whereon to enact his final bestowal. Subsequent to this decision Gabriel made a personal visit to Urantia, and, as a result of his study of human groups and his survey of the spiritual, intellectual, racial, and geographic features of the world and its peoples, he decided that the Hebrews possessed those relative advantages which warranted their selection as the bestowal race. Upon Michael’s approval of this decision, Gabriel appointed and dispatched to Urantia the Family Commission of Twelve— selected from among the higher orders of universe personalities— which was intrusted with the task of making an investigation of Jewish family life. When this commission ended its labors, Gabriel was present on Urantia and received the report nominating three prospective unions as being, in the opinion of the commission, equally favorable as bestowal families for Michael’s projected incarnation.

From the three couples nominated, Gabriel made the personal choice of Joseph and Mary, subsequently making his personal appearance to Mary, at which time he imparted to her the glad tidings that she had been selected to become the earth mother of the bestowal child.

Gabriel appeared to Mary about sundown one evening, and “after she had recovered her composure”— (can you even imagine??)— Gabriel said:

“I come at the bidding of one who is my Master and whom you shall love and nurture. To you, Mary, I bring glad tidings when I announce that the conception within you is ordained by heaven, and that in due time you will become the mother of a son; you shall call him Joshua, and he shall inaugurate the kingdom of heaven on earth and among men. Speak not of this matter save to Joseph and to Elizabeth, your kinswoman, to whom I have also appeared, and who shal l presently also bear a son, whose name shall be John, and who will prepare the way for the message of deliverance which your son shall proclaim to men with great power and deep conviction. And doubt not my word, Mary, for this home has been chosen as the mortal habitat of the child of destiny. My benediction rests upon you, the power of the Most Highs will strengthen you, and the Lord of all the earth shall overshadow you.”

Whew. Take that home to hubby. “How was you day, my love?” “Oh. . . uh. . . Some angel appeared to me today. Says I’m gonna be preggers with God, soon. How was your day?”

Me? I’d be changin’ my shorts. Who the hell are the Most Highs??? How will they strengthen me? What’s a child of destiny?? And what was that about the “kingdom of heaven”??

We live in a time of such detachment from true reality that the notion of God being born as a human baby seems completely absurd. And yet, the story persists. The truth endures.

Happy birthday, Joshua Ben Joseph; happy incarnation, Michael of Nebadon; happy bestowal day, God.

L’chaim.

Surrendering To Love

YOU HAVE UNDERTAKEN THE GREAT ADVENTURE of becoming sons of God, and you have to go through a sort of untangling to reach this place of communion and awareness. Be assured that your sole duty is to go within and dissolve by releasing the outer entanglements, to surrender appetites and forebodings.

The question of appetites is different for each one, both physical and mental; nor must there be resentment and the old sense of duty in the surrender; it is rather permitting a joyful conviction to grow that there is something infinitely more satisfying.

Of course thee will be conflicts. Who isn’t familiar with the reasonable— very reasonable— arguments that come rushing to justify the very human desires of the mind and body? The must be met with as much gentleness toward yourself as you would meet them when trying to help another, otherwise your instant rebellion will obstruct and delay you.

But in the true spirit of surrender, the giving up of everything that has become a burden is little effort and the reward is instant; all things in this state work for your good. And not the old idea of good which was a scourge; but the “goodness which is a rapture.”

Let your heart be at peace in this serene and healing place, for here the Christ will refresh you, here he will lift the heavy burden from your minds and in your hearts he will breathe renewed joy and quietude. Have faith in practice.

In spite of the teachings of Jesus we have been taught to hate evil, but that only justifies the more our complete satisfaction in criticism. In such emotional criticism of our friends and enemies we appear better people to ourselves. It is not the way.

Instead of freedom, we bind the consequences of poisonous hates and resentments to ourselves. We can turn from abstract evil without harm and with a sense of human righteousness. But the human does not hate evil disincarnate, he hates it in a person. Then we ask, “How can I love my enemies?” It would be plain hypocrisy to say we can, or must, do this in the ordinary sense of the word. But the true meaning will appear to you when we say that the outer you cannot love the outer you of another who lives and has his being in the ancient darkness of the race.

Instead, come within and while abiding in the conscious oneness with your inner self see and bless with understanding the inner you of that enemy whose outer you is struggling with the dark jungles of his journey, and by thus releasing him, forgiving him, giving him over, you help him on his way. This is loving your enemy, this is the brotherhood of man. And there is no sentimentality about it; for only by abiding in the Indwelling Spirit can you have this so-called human wisdom as well as the divine wisdom to deal with him according to his needs as well as your own.

You may have to put him in prison, but watch your heart in the matter, for out of it are the issues of life! In times of fierce antagonism realize that the enemy is angry thought; fill yourself, without thought of any person, with a sense of infinite love and peace, for thus are the negative things confounded and a table will be set before you in the presence of your enemies.

Give freely of the Spirit and judge not; be longsuffering and patient, for when you are kind with the kindness of the Spirit to those who are unregenerate, the act frees your own unregeneracy as well. Blessed is he that sees and understands and forgives. Forgive and be forgiven the trespasses, the darknesses, the things negative which terrify. They are forgotten in this high clear stillness. Love conquereth all things.

Restated from Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood • 1948

• • •

The hope of a better nation— a better world—
is bound up in the progress and enlightenment of the individual.

• • •

The most extraordinary book to ever appear on this planet happens to be so circumstantially insulated from the ordinary channels of inquiry that even after a half million copies are loose in the world it remains a great cosmic mystery. I refer to The Urantia Book, about which there is so much to say yet it is so difficult to begin, that in my thirty-six year acquaintance with it I have yet to find even a remotely convenient way to do so.

Suffice it to say then, this time: It is the soul-satisfying banquet you’ve been waiting for; it is the sustenance of eternal life; it is the revelation a billion minds before yours would die to see; it is the current apex of human and divine cosmology.

This excerpt appears in the book as an “acknowledgment”:

“In formulating the succeeding presentations having to do with the portrayal of the character of the Universal Father and the nature of his Paradise associates, together with an attempted description of the perfect central universe and the encircling seven superuniverses, we are to be guided by the mandate of the superuniverse rulers which directs that we shall, in all our efforts to reveal truth and coordinate essential knowledge, give preference to the highest existing human concepts pertaining to the subjects to be presented. We may resort to pure revelation only when the concept of presentation has had no adequate previous expression by the human mind.

“Successive planetary revelations of divine truth invariably embrace the highest existing concepts of spiritual values as a part of the new and enhanced coordination of planetary knowledge. Accordingly, in making these presentations about God and his universe associates, we have selected as the basis of these papers more than one thousand human concepts representing the highest and most advanced planetary knowledge of spiritual values and universe meanings. Wherein these human concepts, assembled from the God-knowing mortals of the past and the present, are inadequate to portray the truth as we are directed to reveal it, we will unhesitatingly supplement them, for this purpose drawing upon our own superior knowledge of the reality and divinity of the Paradise Deities and their transcendent residential universe.

“We are fully cognizant of the difficulties of our assignment; we recognize the impossibility of fully translating the language of the concepts of divinity and eternity into the symbols of the language of the finite concepts of the mortal mind. But we know that there dwells within the human mind a fragment of God, and that there sojourns with the human soul the Spirit of Truth; and we further know that these spirit forces conspire to enable material man to grasp the reality of spiritual values and to comprehend the philosophy of universe meanings. But even more certainly we know that these spirits of the Divine Presence are able to assist man in the spiritual appropriation of all truth contributory to the enhancement of the ever-progressing reality of personal religious experience– God-consciousness.”

[Indited by an Orvonton Divine Counselor, Chief of the Corps of Superuniverse Personalities assigned to portray on Urantia the truth concerning the Paradise Deities and the universe of universes.]

Enjoy.

ADAM and EVE by Ernst Fuchs

Our friend Sherry at A Feather Adrift has written another thought provoking essay on a range of religious issues. I’ve winnowed out several of her interesting questions for comment here. If you have time I suggest you read it there before you read this response.

Is God fully omniscient in time and space?
It is literally true that God is all and in all. He inhabits the “circle of eternity.” God is possessed of unlimited power to know all things; he alone can be in two places, in numberless places. But even that is not all of God. The Infinite can be finally revealed only in infinity; the cause can never be fully comprehended by an analysis of effects; the living God is immeasurably greater than the sum total of creation that has come into being as a result of the creative acts of his unfettered free will.

As an infinite being, God comprehends the end from the beginning of “time,” because both time and space are “sub-absolute.” Space is not infinite, even though it takes origin from Paradise; we do not know the absolute limits of space, but we do know that the absolute of time is eternity.

It may be helpful to realize there are three different levels of time cognizance:
1. Mind-perceived time— consciousness of sequence, motion, and a sense of duration.
2. Spirit-perceived time— insight into motion Godward and the awareness of the motion of ascent to levels of increasing divinity.
3. Personality creates a unique time sense out of insight into Reality, plus a consciousness of presence and an awareness of duration.

Why doesn’t God reveal himself scientifically?
To Science, God is a possibility; to psychology a desirability, to philosophy a probability, to religion a certainty, an actuality of religious experience. Science seeks to identify, analyze, and classify the segmented parts of the limitless cosmos. Reason is the proof of science, faith (not mere belief) is the proof of religion, even as logic is the proof of philosophy. But science must end its reason-search in the hypothesis of a First Cause, because science can never validate God.

Only the personal experience of the faith sons of the Father can effect the actual spiritual realization of the personality of God. You cannot pray to a chemical formula, supplicate a mathematical equation, worship a hypothesis, confide in a postulate, commune with a process, serve an abstraction, or hold loving fellowship with a law. Reason then, would demand that a philosophy which cannot find the God of probability should be very respectful of the religious faith which can, and does, find the God of certitude.

And science should never discount religious experience on grounds of credulity, not so long as it persists in the assumption that our intellectual and philosophic endowments emerged from increasingly lesser intelligences the further back they go, to take origin in primitive life which was utterly devoid of any and all ability to think and feel.

Obviously there is a vast gulf between the infinity of God and the finiteness of man. As truth one may know God, but to understand enough to explain God, one must explore the fact of the universe of universes. The vast gulf between the experience of the truth of God, and ignorance as to the fact of God can be bridged only by living faith. Modern science has left true religion— the teachings of Jesus as translated in the lives of his believers— untouched. All science has done is to destroy the childlike illusions of many of the misinterpretations of life.

Can atheists be “just as moral as the next person”?
Static ethics and traditional morality are just slightly super-animal. Ethics and morals become truly human when they are dynamic and progressive. Morality is not necessarily spiritual; it may be wholly and purely human. But morality without religion fails to reveal ultimate goodness, and it also fails to provide for the survival of even its own moral values. Religion provides for the enhancement and assured survival of everything morality recognizes and approves.

Man can, intellectually, deny God, and yet be morally good, loyal, filial, honest, and even idealistic. And in so doing, man may graft many purely humanistic branches onto his basic spiritual nature, and apparently prove his atheistic contentions. But such an experience is devoid of survival values, God-knowingness, and God-ascension. In such an experience only social fruits are forthcoming, not spiritual.

If you truly believe in God— by faith know him and love him— don’t permit the reality of such an experience to be in any way lessened or detracted from by the doubting insinuations of science, the caviling of logic, the postulates of philosophy, or the clever suggestions of well-meaning souls who would create a religion without God. Live your faith, and it will grow to be of such towering strength it can never be shaken.

How do we define ourselves as “sentient” spiritual creatures?
Unspiritual animals know only the past and live in the present. Spirit-indwelt human beings have prevision— insight— we may visualize the future. “Sentience” must eventually come to be defined as self-conscious personality indwelt by Spirit. Animals are not “self-conscious,” thus they can never experience consciousness
of consciousness.

Self-consciousness implies the recognition of the reality of selves other than the conscious self, and further implies that such awareness is mutual; that the self is known as it knows. But you cannot become so absolutely certain of a fellow being’s reality as you can of the reality of the presence of God that lives within you.

Were Adam and Eve real people?
Despite what current paleontology and DNA might suggest, Adam and Eve were real beings, but they were not evolutionary human beings born on this world. As one might reasonably expect, the true story of their “creation,” as it has come down through 37,000 years of word of mouth, has been stripped of nearly all truth and recognition of the original events.

My first recommendation to anyone interested in the real story of Adam and Eve, or any cosmological question, is to read The Urantia Book. There’s simply no substitute for spiritual revelation. Since that is a formidable commitment of both time and mental reflection, suffice it to say for our our purposes here that Adam and Eve were of a material order of divine sons who come to the evolving worlds of space; these Material Sons and Daughters are the last physical link in the chain of personalities extending from divinity and perfection above, down to humanity and material existence below. Their dispensations usually last many thousands of years, as they attempt to engraft the higher forms of creature life on the primitive men of the evolutionary worlds of space. Unfortunately, that did not fully happen on our world.

It’s hard not to think of the story of Adam and Eve in purely symbolic terms if all you’ve ever been exposed to is the Biblical account. The story of creating Eve out of Adam’s rib is a confused condensation of their arrival and the “celestial surgery” connected with the interchange of living substances associated with the coming of a corporeal staff of celestials, more than four hundred and fifty thousand years previously. It’s too long a story to unfold here, but it must be said that the so-called parents of the human race were at once the recipients of the most blessed, and the most tragic of circumstances of all of the several planetary “dispensations” of celestial over-care that have occurred here-to-for on our world.

The origins of the human race, as even our partial scientific understanding must attest, is a complex, multi-faceted mystery of staggering proportions; as it quite naturally impinges on every realm of human experience. That science has no business in spiritual matters is still a difficult hurdle for most critics of religion to understand, and only further complicates the examination of the interrelatedness of our planetary origins with our universe destiny as creatures.

That said, there are still many things about our origins that can be known, and known now, that will take science many, many more decades to factually unravel. That this knowing must use living faith to achieve its certainty in no way lessens its relevance to individuals in pursuit of intelligent and worthy cosmological understanding. It will probably remain a sad fact that many otherwise brilliant atheistic individuals will never discover the true nature of living faith, preferring instead the much more ludicrous but serviceable definition of faith as mere belief.

The fact that vast time is involved in the attainment of God makes the presence and personality of the Infinite none the less real. Our individual ascension is a part of the circuit of the vast universe, and though we may swing around it countless times, we may expect, in spirit and in status, to be ever swinging inward. We can depend upon being translated from sphere to sphere, from the far outer circuits where we are now, to ever nearer the inner center, and our destination, Paradise. And some day, doubt not, we shall stand in the divine and central presence and see him, figuratively speaking, face to face.

Yep, Chimpy stopped by our office today. The hardcore software geeks have their own communal cell near the center of the campus circles. I was almost finished painting a mural on the last wall of their cube farm, one of four twenty foot tall stucco constraints with no windows; at least the poor bastards would now have something beautiful to stare at while they longed to be anywhere else but work.

What was really strange about his visit, besides being totally unannounced, was the fact it was sans Secret Service goons; maybe they were in the cafeteria fucking off with the coffee cake. And he was wearing some goddamned silly-assed NASA flight suit getup, so he looked even more like an imbecile than he usually does.

Bush insisted on a group photo— “fur when history vindicates me.” Naturally, we obliged him.

I had a little forced one-to-one time with him. Since no one in the office even looked up when he walked in, he wandered over to the coffee station where I was gettin’ my joe on. It was awkward— one, because he had a fuggin’ toothpick in his mouth, which he kept tonguing from one side of his mouth to the other, and two, everyone in the office stopped and turned to watch what would happen when he got in my personal space.

Then, it was like someone flipped a forgotten switch in a long dark hallway, and his little weasel windows bore into me like I imagined the Great Satan’s might be able to.

“How’s teh java?” he said, avoiding eye contact. I took a long sip and said, “You’re not gonna like it.” He gave one of those classic Jon Stewart “Heh heh hehs,” and reached for a cup. Since he’d caught me with my flask out, I tilted it his way; both his eyebrows did a little simultaneous hop and he thrust his cup forward with an emphatic, “Helll yes.”

I poured a good jigger in, but he gestured for another. “Be my guest,” I muttered, and handed it over; he held it inverted over his cup until a drop formed that refused to fall. “How ’bout a little coffee with that,” I suggested, barely concealing my annoyance with his boorish flash of lushitude.

Another “Heh heh heh” followed another “Helll yes.”

He looked me up and down as he returned the empty flask, and said, “So whutur you, teh resident hippie?” Another chuckle got past his toothpick. Collecting myself with another draught of morning mud, I ventured, “You know, I’ve always wanted to ask you— “What do you think you’ll say with your last breath?”

He swallowed a good third more of his beverage, and turned to acknowledge the software geeks by raising his cup in a mock toast to them. They just stared, motionless. He turned back to me and remarked, “They don’t say too much, do they. I like that.”

Then, it was like someone flipped a forgotten switch in a long dark hallway, and his little weasel windows bore into me like I imagined the Great Satan’s might be able to.

“You probably b’lieve in good and evil, don’tcha hippie guy. Well I do too. But then, then ya got yur evil in yur good, and ya got yur good in yur evil; know wudda mean? There was no pause for me to answer. “But then ya got yur no bad good, and ya got yur no good bad; and there ain’t no good good, and no bad bad— see? He took another long suck on his boozalotte, and, his head cocked to one side, he continued.

“Now— teh good man thinks of teh Devil, and teh evil man thinks a lot about teh God. But if ya think yur thoughts right between teh two ya know— then ya know there’s a day teh be evil, and a day teh be good; so, when ya wake up in the mornin’, ya ask yurself, ‘Who’s day’s it gonna be tehday? Is it teh God’s day, or is it teh Devil’s day?”

His brow suddenly unfurled and he looked really pleased with himself, as if he had just successfully arm-wrestled some enormous cosmic truth down from a lofty heavenly rampart, and was revealing it on the white house lawn for the whole world to revel in. It was then I realized that was all he had to say.

I looked at him as it settled over me like a giant cloud of methane flatulence, that he was totally rat-shit fucking insane. And probably a little drunk, too.

Lots of things raced through my mind, like he never answered my question, like he never even heard it. Like, this man has the blood of many hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children on his hands, and he talks about “teh God” and “teh Devil” as if he were talking about two ordinary shits like Hannity and Colmes. Like, he’s already soul destroyed and spiritually dead, only his body doesn’t know it yet. Like, I’on’t even know.

“Teh God and teh Devil”

I took another drink of coffee as a wave of compassion washed over me in the exact same way a wave of nausea would; Bush had whirled around and was headed over to the locked utility closet, no doubt thinking it was the exit.

I went back to work.

Anyone who hasn’t noticed the rabid up-tick in the perceived toxic ties between the presidential candidates and their religious affiliations gets a sincere “get well soon,” because you have to be in some kind of coma. The only one who appears to have escaped the holy vetting is Mrs Clinton, which may speak more to the fact she has no real religious associations outside of the little prayer circle she attends in the Senate.

But look. As Clinton thrashes wildly in dead air preparatory to plunging to her political death, Obama and now McCain are getting the religious scrubbing of a lifetime because they’re going to be the nominees. The reasons the electorate is finally paying attention to their religious ties however, run a lot deeper than Fixed Noise’s manufactured crisis ‘o video loops of Jeramiah Wright, or the totally whacktard theologies of the neocon nutballs associated with McCain.

Like it or not human beings are hard-wired to long for something higher, deeper, and more profound than material reality; a higher universe reality— the world of spirit. Religion is a personal and real reality for most of humanity. But when institutionalized religion becomes sanctioned by the state, tacitly or overtly, we’re all in danger of policies being directed by the personal interpretations of the religion-specific values held by a small number of people. Remember: the last time we tried mixing government with religion, we wound up burning people at the stake.

The recent erosion of the fragile wall between church and state produced by policies and attitudes of the Cheney-Bush debacle, which either directly or indirectly facilitate the bizarre theories of a coming apocalypse, are unfortunately only one of several afflictions currently threatening our liberty.

Here’s a check-list of a dozen things, in no particular order, that lovers of freedom and liberty should monitor as frequently as they would a weather station— with constant vigilance. . . followed by examples of how they are threatening our liberty right now, every day.

Usurpation of unwarranted power by either the executive or legislative branches. Signing statements— what, 157 at last count?

Machinations of ignorant and superstitious agitators. Rush Limbaugh; Anne Coulter; Shaun Hannity; Bill O’Reilly; Glen Beck. . .

Retardation of scientific progress. Stem Cell Research; Terri Schiavo. . .

Stalemate of the dominance of mediocrity. “Stay the course” Bush; health care crisis; no energy policy; no higher moral vision. . .

Domination by vicious minorities. Swift boat morons; Fox News. . .

Control by ambitious and clever would-be dictators. George Bush ala Dick Cheney. . .

Disastrous disruption of panics. Global War on Terror; Gasoline prices; subprime lending crisis. . .

Exploitation by the unscrupulous. Haliburton, KBR, all other war profiteers. . .

Failure of social and economic fairness. Toleration of poverty; no higher education for the poor; ridiculous minimum wage; no health care; no working immigration policy; unfair taxation. . .

Union of church and state. Neocons and Bush on a mission from God; “In God we trust” on our money; paid Christian ministers in the House and Senate. Every elected senator or Congressman knows how to pray, and they certainly can pray on the record if they want to. But there’s no place for paid or voluntary professional clergy of any religion to be in our House and Senate, leading our elected representatives in prayer or worship.

Loss of personal liberty. Habeas Corpus; NSA spying; Fear mongering government regulations.

And now, because I follow Jesus,

let’s close with a short prayer, shall we?

Unless, of course, you don’t believe in God. In that case, thank the total chance existence of a great sequencer of an apparently infinite number of sequential moments of reality that, lucky for us, somehow attaches to— and brings forth out of nothing?— the individual consciousness of billions of sentient beings on this planet, and no doubt trillions more on all the inhabited worlds throughout a vast universe, wherever they may be.

Or just don’t think about it at all, moron.

Lauif jiss sorta showed up assidental like outa the primordal slime!!
And the Yooniverse wars an assident tuw!!

Luck is merely a term coined to cover the inexplicable in any age of human existence; it designates those phenomena which men are unable or unwilling to penetrate. Chance is a word which signifies that man is too ignorant or too indolent to determine causes. Men regard a natural occurrence as an accident or as bad luck only when they are destitute of curiosity and imagination, when the races lack initiative and adventure. Exploration of the phenomena of life sooner or later destroys man’s belief in chance, luck, and so-called accidents, substituting therefor a universe of law and order wherein all effects are preceded by definite causes. Thus is the fear of existence replaced by the joy of living. —The Urantia Book