The Apocalypse just keeps on coming;  this month, Dick says to Jesus,
“I can take that there dove off your hands with one shot.”

Got my June Issue of Apocalypse Magazine today, even though my subscription expired a year ago, there have been massive layoffs and firings of writers and staff, and the company is in receivership.  Now ain’t that America for you and me.

Product of popular culture that I am, when I first subscribed I didn’t realize there were other meanings for the word apocalypse.  Religious shills have used the term exclusively to refer to the end of the world.  But way back when, some Greek geek decided the word was a shortening of the phrase “apokalupsis eschaton,” which means “revelation at the end of the æon, or age.” Apokálypsis can mean “lifting of the veil,” or “revelation.”  And then there’s the Bible, where the term apocalypse refers to a revelation of God’s will.  Anyway.  The June lifting of the veil is upon us. [Read more →]

Are we “One” yet?  Click and see.

Friend Quaker Dave writes, “We have become what it is we claim to fear.”

Rather:  We have always been and still are what we claim we hate.

And that is a people that continue to justify the torture and murder of other human beings in the name of— whatever.

If America really is a “Christian Nation” as the traditional conservative voice of religion keeps insisting, then why can’t it recognize that the United States has not— does not— uphold even the basic traditions of the truth of Jesus Christ, their founding father?  Nor does it practice his values, still so simply stated that even simpletons should be able to grok it:  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  And, “Love your enemies.”

Do Christians pretend that “Who Would Jesus Waterboard?” is just a snarky bumpersticker? or do they recognize it is the total moral indictment of our nation’s claimed Judeo-Christian heritage. It goes to the very heart of the issue—  of God’s children, which are “okay” to torture and kill?  And which are not? [Read more →]

The soft light of the instruments shone off the large eyes of navigator Dorac. He placed the ship into low orbit, approximately over Washington, DC.  Pilot Nandon, pressed a series of actions into the ship. The first was her announcement to the entire host:

My friends, we are orbiting the World of the Cross; the tarnished shrine of our beloved Creator Son whom the natives of this world put to death.  We are now over the capital city of the federation of states known as the United States of America.

You are all familiar with the past and recent history of this nation, and the approaching crossroads this blighted world faces.  The political life of the planet is today struggling to achieve a new recognition of the fundamental understanding of brotherhood, which will bring a new willingness to cooperate— without the historic antagonisms and hostility so pervasive in their dealings with each other.  Perhaps too, a renewed dedication to make fearless and trustworthy commitments to support the collective will of the progressive and united nations of the world.

The parochial fears of a sizable portion of a poorly educated electorate and its unusually immature philosophy have been largely quelled by a more or less increasingly unified and universal majority of progressive humans for whom peace is their passion, and goodwill among all men their creed.  Their growing insistence that their elected representatives respect their will has resulted in dramatic and rapid changes within the body politic, and has brought the dawning of a new day of hope and achievement in planetary sanity.

One such example: only recently, an elected governor of a state participated in the aerial hunting of animal life;  but a more enlightened national majority is seeking to enact a strict moratorium on the hunting of all forms of animal life not critical to their food supplies, during a worsening of their planet-wide ecological crisis and the increasing possibility of atmospheric catastrophe.  They argue astutely that all species will need the full resourcefulness of its collective genetic power to evolve through the coming decades of global atmospheric adversity.

At long last, the respective races and nations seem to have finally grasped a partial significance of the inherent absurdity in ascribing the appearance of the uniform and dependable laws of the cosmos to random chance;  increasingly they recognize that a vast universe of mathematics simply cannot exist without a Master Mathematician.

Puzzling to report however, a majority of their religious leaders continue to make the great mistake of calling their modern communities to spiritual awareness with the discordant trumpet blasts of their Middle Ages. They still assume democracy can take the place of spiritual progress.  And they do not yet comprehend that world peace could be promoted far more effectively by international trade organizations, than by all their supposed visionary peace planning.

I would  admonish all who participate in surface explorations to be ever mindful that this world, Urantia, is still a quarantined world— and that our prime directive admonishes us not to interfere with their normal evolutionary progress. Thus:  avoiding the siting of your craft, or encounters of any sort with the native peoples is your chief concern, after personal safety.

Finally, I urge everyone to enjoy your visit to this World of the Cross;  our days are short here, due to the great interest in this singular world of Nebadon, the bestowal world of the Son of God.  Enjoy your time.

As the sundry creatures of a thousand different worlds witnessed their first dawn of Urantia’s pale little sun from the comfort of the main observation lounge, their excitement in seeing this storied, but backward, blue world of the rebellion-torn system of Satania, evoked strong emotions.  And many wondered aloud if the precious populations in the cities and towns twinkling below in the growing light of a new day, entertained any real idea of how eternally fortunate they were.

•

The human race must become reconciled
to a procession of changes, adjustments, and readjustments.
Mankind is on the march toward a new and unrevealed planetary destiny.

—The Urantia Book

(Original image)

The Two Brothers of Emmaus (after Caravaggio) Terry Kruger

“Did not this Jesus tell you, even in Galilee,
that he would die, but that he would rise again?”

JERUSALEM — Words alone can never fully describe the Resurrection of Jesus. The Urantia Book’s account, which comes the closest to revealing the truth of what actually happened on the morning of April 9, 30 A.D. — for our time— is still a narration that must be heard with the ear of faith.  Not because it lacks the compelling power of truth, but because it involves events beyond the scope of normal human experience.  Those who chance to read this who might lack the faith necessary to put these things in their rightful perspective can, nonetheless, benefit from the experience of simply putting the narration of these events into their personal consciousness.  What your Spirit is able to do with it once it’s there, is another matter.

We pick up the story inside the Sanhedrin, where a group of chief priests gathered at the home of Caiaphas near midnight, Friday. They discussed their fears concerning Jesus’ public assertions that he would “rise from the dead on the third day.”  They appointed a committee to officially request a Roman guard be stationed at the tomb, to prevent his disciples from stealing the body by night, and proclaim that Jesus had risen from the dead.  Subsequently, Pilate did provide a guard of ten soldiers to accompany ten Jewish guards.  And these twenty soldiers decided to roll a second stone before the tomb, and they set the seal of Pilate on and around both stones, lest they be disturbed without their knowledge.  The larger of these two stones was a huge circular milled stone, which moved in a groove chiseled out of the rock;  it could be rolled back and forth to open or close the tomb.

The Jewish guards and the Roman soldiers, in the dim light of the morning, saw this huge stone begin to roll away from the entrance of the tomb— apparently of its own accord— without any visible means to account for such motion.  The entire contingent of soldiers panicked;  the Jews fled to their homes, the Romans to the fortress of Antonia.  The guards were paid bribes— and instructed to say, “While we slept during the nighttime, his disciples came upon us and took away the body.”

That’s right.  A few fishermen, carpenters, and common folk who followed Jesus, armed with boat oars and wood mallets, overpowered twenty soldiers of a combined Roman and Jewish guard. [Read more →]

NOTE: Historians are largely in agreement that the crucifixion of Jesus probably occurred on Nisan 14, (April 7), according to the Gospel of John. The Urantia Book confirms this date,  including many details of the events which unfolded during those momentous days around April, 7, A.D. 30, which gives new dimension to the timeless story of how a backward planet dealt death to the Creator of the Universe.

JERUSALEM — A rapid-fire series of events have swirled around the controversial prophet and wonder-worker of Nazareth, Joshua Ben Joseph, and have culminated today in a shocking mock-trial and immediate crucifixion of the Galilean teacher this morning. From his sudden and triumphal entrance into the city this past Sunday, followed by Monday’s electrifying rout of the temple bankers and merchandisers from the temple courts, the city filled with Passover throngs have yet to catch their breath from the onslaught of these startling events.

ARRESTED IN GETHSEMANE PARK
Things began unfolding around eleven PM at Gethsemane Park, where Jesus had been praying with three of his apostles, when Judas Iscariot lead a group of an estimated sixty persons with torches and lanterns into the garden.   The group included a contingent of Roman soldiers under orders of Procurator Pontius Pilate from the fortress of Antonia.  Witnesses say Iscariot was “well out in front” of the soldiers, but we are informed that Iscariot was in the process of betraying Jesus, and this distance was intended to give the impression to his recently deserted fellow-followers that he was not connected with the armed guards which followed so closely on his heels.

Sources close to the prophet Jesus have confirmed that as recently as March 29th he had again pronounced to his apostles that he was completely aware of plans to deliver him into the hands of the chief priests and religious rulers, who would in turn deliver him into the hands of the gentiles, who would then “deliver him up to death.”

It has been widely reported for several weeks the Sadducees, who control and dominate the Sanhedrin, have publicly dared to condemn Jesus in advance of a trial, and that Herod is said to have become so frightened by the confirmed resurrection of Lazarus that he intended to kill Jesus, or at least drive him from the territory.

Would you even betray the Son of Man with a kiss?

Witnesses at the park say that as Iscariot approached Jesus, the prophet stepped aside and addressed the approaching captain of the Roman guards saying, “Whom do you seek?” The captain answered, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus calmly stepped directly in front of the officer saying, “I am he.” Observers say the front ranks fell suddenly backward, overcome with surprise at his boldness.

As the guards rallied from their initial faltering, Judas stepped up to Jesus and, kissing the prophet on the brow, said, “Hail Master and Teacher.” Jesus said, “Friend, is it not enough to do this! Would you even betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” Witnesses said Jesus then repeated his question to the Roman captain, got the same answer, and said, “I have told you that I am he. If, therefore, you seek me, let these others go their way.  I am ready to go with you.”

Before they could depart, however, witnesses at the scene say the Syrian bodyguard of the high priest, Malchus, attempted to bind the prophet’s hands behind his back, which caused the associates of Jesus to immediately rush forward with at least one sword drawn.

Even before the soldiers could come to the defense of the high priest’s servant, Jesus raised a forbidding hand and, speaking sternly, said: “Peter, put up your sword. They who take the sword shall perish by the sword. Do you not understand that it is the Father’s will that I drink this cup? And do you not further know that I could even now command more than twelve legions of angels and their associates, who would deliver me from the hands of these few men?”

By this time the captain was freaking big time and immediately had Jesus bound and gave orders that the others should be seized too, but they slipped into the surrounding darkness and eluded their captors.  Jesus was then taken to the home of Annas, the former high priest, and father-in-law of Caiaphas, the acting high priest. [Read more →]

“The intellectual factors of religion are important, but their over­de­vel­op­ment is likewise sometimes very handicapping and embarrassing.”— Paper 102, Section 3

In a thrift store recently I saw a framed sign for sale. I didn’t buy it, but I remembered it. It said:

                        Life is a test.

                        It is only a test.

                        If it had been a real life

                        you would have been given instructions

                        on where to go and what to do.

Well, for us lucky few (compared to the world at large, anyway), students of The Urantia Book, we finally have our instructions, clear and simple.

But are we obeying them? Are we doing all we can to live the realest lives we can, which are what the instructions are for, because life is no longer only a test, but seriously real? If not, why not? Do we really want to live the realest lives we can?

I believe that deep down we want that more than anything, but for various reasons find it difficult to stay in touch with, probably to just the extent that we find it difficult to stay in touch with God. Might we be able to help each other with this if we focused on it together?

Of course.

Do we need leadership with this?

Sure.

Am I answering my own questions too much?

Obviously.

I think the Urantia community is desperate for leadership, which is always a dangerous situation in that it may tempt people to give over to someone else responsibilities that they have to fulfill for themselves if they’re to have any meaning and value. We’ve always known this as a community, and been wary of anyone who seemed to be rising to prominence as a leader, kind of like Americans are wary of anyone who starts looking like a king. As with most unfulfilled needs, though, denying them will only make people more susceptible to trying to get them fulfilled in ways that don’t work. Americans repudiate the idea of king and aristocracy and then fall under the influence of caricatures of both.

Sooner or later, though, as Winston Churchill put it, Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing—after they’ve exhausted all other possibilities. I’m sure the Urantia community is just as dependable. Any true spiritual leader, of any religion anywhere, will, like the Spirit of Truth, direct people’s attention not to himself or herself but to God.

Inward, in other words. In fact, such leaders will be horrified by adoration of their own persons, seeing it for what it is—an attempt by followers to escape the responsibility to find God, the true leader within us all, in their own way— an attempt, in fact, to use leadership as a shield against God’s presence, which they find maybe too intense, or too transforming, or too real; or, if they’ve been shamed or become guilt-ridden for some reason, too good, true, and beautiful. It’s very easy, simple, and calming to imagine Jesus as your constant companion, but it means no longer trying to avoid transforming the way you think and act. Until we make our loyalty to him more important than any of our other loyalties, such companionship will feel judgmental instead of deeply, spiritually nourishing. Not that Jesus judges us and refuses to forgive us, but that’s the way it will feel until we live in a way that manifests our loyalty.

It happens again and again nevertheless, this adoration of human leaders, maybe because we lost our Adam and Eve. There’s a cult in India today that worships a statue of Gandhi, who I’m sure kind of sadly shakes his head when he observes it.

Closer to home, I once attended a study group in which there were strange warnings about spirituality, as if it were a dangerous territory you entered at your peril. There was even a lot of wondering about how mysterious “spirit” is and how difficult it is to understand or get your mind around. When someone said they didn’t know what spirit is there was general agreement, almost as if it were a self-evident problem.

I wanted to ask what everyone thought the statement in the book meant that says we need to make “effective use of thought while at the same time discounting the spiritual serviceableness of all thinking,” and how it related to the statement that “Jesus taught the most to those to whom he said the least,” but I got the definite feeling from those present that such questions were somewhat out of place in a philosophical discussion which was really more of a case of one person talking and everyone else listening and nodding.

I knew that everyone there actually did know what spirit was—because everyone there knew what love was, what honesty, compassion, selflessness, courage, loyalty, gratitude, and humility were—but they thought they didn’t because they were trying to understand it from the level of intellect alone, which is impossible. Even a child knows what spirit is, but it’s an experiential, not merely philosophical, knowing, which is deeply personal and inevitably a part of relationship. The fact that no one there could describe spirit in intellectual terms didn’t mean they didn’t know what it is, and pointed to one of the dangers of approaching such questions with the intellect alone—it can deceive people into thinking there’s no point in trying to explore them. It can distract people into developing their intellects while ignoring their spiritual development, because it tempts them to see spirituality as something vague and susceptible to fanaticism. Intellectualism without spiritual experience is a great blindness in itself.

Our intellects, though essential, are only part of a greater intelligence that has been given us, that if we’re to fulfill our destinies in larger, maybe even heroic ways (why not? what is eternal life worth?), we need to develop even more urgently.

We all know we’re much more than the part of us that thinks, but for some reason or reasons, many of us find ourselves somewhat embarrassed by that fact—maybe even a little afraid of it, or a lot afraid of it. As the old Puritan Jonathan Edwards once pointed out, God is not where it’s hardest to find him, but where it’s hardest to look for him.

Our minds alone will not deliver us from fear. We have to find ways to open our hearts as much as we’ve opened our minds if we’re truly to understand our destinies and those of others—understand God, Jesus, others, and ourselves—and be able to serve as we need to serve. Our need to serve in the deepest way we can is not only our responsibility, it’s also the only key there is to our joy, and the “peace that passes all understanding” that proves to us and others that we have truly been with God, and truly understand the message of the Fifth Epochal Revelation.

To take Christian experience as an example, few in the sincere Christian community came to their belief by being handed a Bible, or having the Bible talked up to them. Most came to it through their relationship with some Christian or Christians who they felt really cared about them.

“In science, the idea precedes the expression of its realization; in religion, the experience of realization precedes the expression of the idea.” —Paper 102, Section 3

Spiritual experience is real, despite it’s susceptibility to misinterpretation by the mind, not to mention the ego, and endless intellectual discussions won’t help us understand what can only be experienced as an aspect of relationship, to God and each other. If we were all sitting on the shore of the sea of glass and had all the time we needed to intellectualize about things, such discussions might be fine—though I’m sure we’ll have many responsibilities to fulfill there as well—but that’s not where we are, and our troubled world needs more from us. It needs our spiritual maturity more than our intellectual descriptions of reality, as useful as those can be at times. When trying to show a scientist the reality of values, for instance, sometimes a sincerely caring hand on his or her shoulder may be more effective than all the intricate explanations we can muster. It’s how Jesus could teach with a look much more than some of his lengthy sermons did to individual truth-seekers.

Science doesn’t handle feelings very well—distrusts and disparages them, for the most part, except for psychology, which is hardly a real science—but truth is something we can’t experience through the intellect alone. We have to feel it, and when we do it changes us. It doesn’t just leave us where we were with more ideas in our heads.

To illustrate the difference between spiritual and merely intellectual understanding, consider the parable of Jesus washing the apostles’ feet. A merely intellectual understanding would see that act as a teaching, which it was. Jesus wanted to teach his followers (and us in the future as well) a deeper meaning of service, and he did it with hardly any words. But to truly understand his teaching we need to realize that Jesus not only wanted to teach—he wanted to wash his apostles’ feet, because they needed their feet washed. He was being not only a teacher but a father, and the deepest friend they had ever known. This is the spiritual meaning of the parable, though words alone can’t convey the value of what must be felt to be understood.

Another warning that came up in this “discussion” was about thinking you can change the world. The ego aspect of this warning was legitimate, but again such warnings can be an excuse for spiritual inaction, which leads to stagnation—such as the present state of the Urantia “movement,” other than, for the most part, around the task of selling books. We’ve been given many more talents than just that of book-selling, and leaving it to the book to deliver the message at the heart of it is like Christians handing people Bibles and assuming that they’ve done their duty, that the recipients of their largesse will now be good Christians. Jesus’ teachings are focused precisely on changing the world, through changing ourselves into self-conscious sons of God and ambassadors of a better world. This is our primary responsibility, not a dangerous fantasy, yet so little of the “movement” is focused on it, other than in an intellectual (read “abstract and impersonal”) way.

No one can understand the Fifth Epochal Revelation without understanding the Fourth—this is made clear to us over and over again throughout the book, beginning with Paper 2—and that understanding can never come through the intellect alone. It needs the unified effort of all the powers of one’s being, a singleness of purpose that’s not a fanatical illusion but the best, truest, most beautiful and real experience human beings are capable of.

Philosophy and science are important to our growth, but when they try to usurp the role of religion and confine us to their realms they become sophistries and obstructions that can make us think we’re growing when we’re really not, inevitably limiting the scope of our service as well.

All sincere students of The Urantia Book display the fruits of the spirit in their lives in various ways, and helping each other with this is one of the most important services our community can perform—much more important than helping each other understand everything in the book. Bearing spiritual fruit is the only thing that can truly unify our community, a community, incidentally, that consists of not just this or that formal organization, because believers are believers, regardless of their organizational affiliation or lack of it. Whether or not we choose to believe it and act accordingly, we’re a family. All of us live in the same universe and one day will be as dedicated as it’s possible to be to the fact of our spiritual unity. It will form the basis of our identity in our consciousness as well as in truth and reality.

Why not focus on being in this unity consciousness, not just getting there? Is that not the only way we can get there? That may sound paradoxical to the intellect, but we have to develop the ability to recognize when our thoughts are interfering with our larger intelligence and understanding. Our culture often encourages such interference because it suffers from scientism, the religion of pseudo-scientific reasoning, which confuses intellectualism with intelligence, the part with the whole.

A spiritual community is a community of people dedicated to something transcendent, and in the case of Urantia Book students does it not have to be dedicated, first of all, to the Great Commandment? “You shall love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” This is our primary responsibility, shown us by the Fourth Epochal Revelation, which is not just part of, but the foundation of, the Fifth. It came before it, and the climax of the Fifth is a deep restatement of it in the clearest way it can be expressed with words alone.

We survive in the universe because we have a universe purpose—the task of finding God. It’s good to sell Urantia Books, and to study the book and coax others to read and study it, but we don’t survive in the universe because we do such things. We survive because we’re sincerely seeking to find God, or because we even sincerely want to sincerely seek to find God. There are many other seekers who know nothing of The Urantia Book who may be even better than we are at fulfilling this greatest responsibility, though what we know, if communicated wisely, could be of great value to their quest.

This important ability, though—to communicate wisely—is a spiritual skill the book alone can’t give us. It needs actual experience in relating to people who see things differently than we do, as everyone, in some way, does. We survive not because we read and study The Urantia Book, but because we believe The Urantia Book, or sincerely believe some other description of our pathway to God that awakens our loyalty to the supreme values of love, service, honesty, humility, gratitude, selflessness—or because we want to sincerely believe.

A sincere, wholehearted desire to believe is actually a greater display of faith than half-hearted, merely intellectual assent, as Jesus clearly pointed out to his apostles when he came down from the Mount of Transfiguration and healed the child of James of Safed.

All of us in our individual lives prove that we’re capable of truly spiritual experience whenever we love and unselfishly serve, but we have yet to prove that as a community we can truly call ourselves spiritual. In fact the community, especially when we include the Foundation, may have a great deal to atone for in this regard, and the best way to atone for the actions of some in our family is to move forward doing and being what we should be doing and being, which we can discover, ultimately, only through our loyalty to the Great Commandment.

The victory of religion over politics in the good sense is when the truth of spiritual family dominates all other loyalties. Is this not the victory the world at large needs now? Are the horrors we see in the news every day not a direct result of the distraction from this truth in the minds of so many? Is it not our responsibility to contribute to the victory of this truth in every way we can, consistent with our loyalty to the Great Commandment? Can we fulfill this responsibility, even in the midst of intellectual disagreements, without spiritual unity? A true brother is a brother, a true sister a sister, whether or not they’re agreeing in the moment about mere ideas.

The value of a truly spiritual, not merely formally religious, community is that it’s a spiritual family of people personally dedicated to God’s way (love), to one another, and to the needs of our suffering planet, people who help each other attain those heights of loyalty and dedication where we actually draw closer to God’s spirit within us and one day may even hear the divine voice while still in our first bodies, and fall in love with that voice forever.

To know God is to love God, to find the peace that passes all understanding that our world so needs more people to experience and share. To know God is to experience the joy that in a wonderful way also reveals an eternal inadequacy—to ever be able to thank him enough, not for what he has given us, nor for what he will make of us, but for who he is—for simply being able to know him, whose goodness is forever inexpressibly humbling, maybe especially to us who begin so lowly.

What we have been given does not belong to us alone—even our lives. Our primary duty in this life, and even in life eternal, is not to understand, but to relate to others as God relates to us, as the human life of Jesus so clearly showed us. A thoroughgoing intellectual understanding of the words of the revelation is not what our children or our world or the supermortal government of Urantia needs from us. It’s not what our caretakers and supporters watching us from beyond, and our spirits from within us, are waiting for.

Understanding is something the mind craves on its own, and habitually and sometimes necessarily fabricates when it can’t actually achieve it. The quest for it is an essential part of our growth, but to elevate intellectual understanding above the experience of spiritualizing relationships and insight into the actual human needs that stand before us is a betrayal of our duty to God and his Creator Son. We are here to love, and whatever gets in the way of that, or distracts us from the realization that we need to get better at it, is a sophistry that has no real value to us or our world. Even Paul, in II Corinthians (3,6), said:

“[God] hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”

Intellectual study of the book is good, but in itself it does nothing to promote the evolution of the kind of community the world, whether it knows it or not, needs us to show it. “Love, and do what you will,” Augustine said, and if you take that in the right spirit it will always be true. Understanding something before committing to it is the way of science. It is not the way of spirituality. God needs our faith and loyalty, not simply our understanding, and it is usually the case that the spiritual growth that results from our loyalty is necessary before we can truly understand, in a much deeper than just intellectual way. We believe, we act, we grow, and then perhaps we understand, or perhaps our understanding will have to wait for much more growth before we have any hope of actually realizing why we were asked to act in the ways we were, which we don’t need to be suspicious of because they are always beautiful, good, and true—even self-evident from within the experience of them.

Right now we are being asked to exhibit the new and amazing affection for each other and others that proves to everyone with a modicum of soul consciousness that we have been with the spiritual source and destiny of all life, through his Son. This is the only key there is to our own happiness, the fulfillment of our duty, and even, ultimately, our eternal survival. It is also the only key there is to true understanding. But no one needs to understand this intellectually in order to experience its truth. The words, the names, the ideas I just expressed are of little importance compared to the spiritual realization of true, eternal relationship we share with others, whatever they believe intellectually. This relationship is immediate, self-evidently more valuable than any attempt to define it, and something we will understand completely only in the endless future that lies before us.

Isn’t it time that we focused on the need to develop ourselves in this way, which we can do only in partnership with others? The sharing and strengthening of awareness of spiritual values is the essence of a truly spiritual community, and the deepest need of all formal religious groups—or at least of their individual members. When religious groups don’t serve this need they are already dying whether they know it or not, even if they control whole nations and peoples, because they’ve cut themselves off from the source of their spiritual sustenance even as someone who cries “Lord! Lord!” but betrays real spiritual ideals at every turn is merely living out the winding down of his physical energies to the ultimate dissipation of the self.

We shouldn’t balk at the need to save the world. Of course only God can change it in a way that’s truly forward-looking and progressive, partly through us if we’re truly following his spirit, but it’s a task that actually needs us and all other people on our planet who realize what needs to be done, beginning with the purification of our own hearts and motives. As Margaret Mead’s famous statement put it, “Never doubt that a small group of committed individuals can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Let’s study The Urantia Book, of course, but let’s also study the true needs before us, of the world and the individual—needs that we can see and serve only by actually loving, not by impersonal philosophical attitudes of altruism. If our study doesn’t help us serve these needs, it hasn’t led us to understanding.

The time is nearing for us to fully play our public part on the stage of Urantian history, and only our commitment to the Great Commandment and the socialization of it in a truly spiritual community will prepare us to do justice to the role that has been given us. In these times that try people’s souls, let’s show what we, and all other people, whether they know it or not, are truly made of. Let’s give the world a community of God-conscious sons and daughters of God, and all that means. It’s not beyond us to do this. A great deal is expected of the generation following a great revelation, and when more is expected of it, more is given it to fulfill such expectations.

It begins with feeling the real value of what we have to give the world, which is not the revelation only but more importantly what it means, and what its message has made and is making of us, and the proof that affords of what it can make of others.

“About” is an important word in The Urantia Book—the religion about Jesus, rather than the religion of Jesus (the religion with Jesus). How many religions, knowingly or ignorantly, are religions about God, rather than religions with God? How many religions know that they can be a practice of being with God personally, intimately, lovingly present with each human being, who has the deepest, most transforming respect for each of us that we’ll ever experience, and is closer to us than any of us can be to each other except through this same spirit gift?

How many really want to know that, and all that it implies about our responsibility to fulfill the incredible potentials we’ve been given even in this first life, where their fulfillment can do so much to contribute to our world’s spiritual needs—relieving suffering, promoting healing, facilitating mutual understanding, and most of all transforming spiritual loneliness into the joy of companionship with God? Isn’t this the message Urantia needs most, and isn’t it a message that those who need it most will believe only when they see it and feel it, not just read it or hear about it?

“About” implies separation, abstraction, distance. How long will we continue, as a community, to spend most of our time talking about God, talking about Jesus, as if neither were actually present with us—even as we criticize Christianity for the same kind of neglect and disrespect? Isn’t it time to practice the presence of God together, to include God and his Creator Son in all our thoughts and acts and communications, and experience the intensity, yes, but also the peace, clarity, love, healing, and divine energy of that experience?

The Urantia Book is a call to action like our world has not experienced for two millennia—even the same call to action of two thousand years ago, but with the advantage of all those years of the work of the Mystery Monitors and the Spirit of Truth in all moral minds on our planet, building a foundation for our present work here, and the work of all others who love God. There’s a great deal in the revelation that will mean much more, and be more understandable, to future generations, but we are the present, human, visible foundation of the revelation’s impact on our world.

What do we present to newcomers when they arrive in our study groups? Ambassadors of a better world? People who are truly respectful of them, and truly interested in their experience, not just in sharing our own with them or getting on with our own agendas? Jesus’ method with people, though it shouldn’t really be called something as calculating as a method, was so effective because he opened their minds by first opening their hearts. We need to learn how to do this, by seeing people, first, not as future Urantia Book readers, but as the sons and daughters of God they are—as God sees them, as Jesus sees them.

When people realize that we’re genuinely interested in them, not just interested in selling them something or telling them something we know that they don’t, they’ll be much more liable to be genuinely interested in us and what’s important to us. We will have served them as God desires us to, and received the gift as well of meeting another eternal friend whose life is irreplaceable in the universe.

We also need to serve each other in these ways. Spiritual relationships, the basis of a real spiritual family, are characterized by trust, loyalty, selflessness, nonjudgment, understanding, and love, and trust comes first for a reason. It’s so easily avoided, and even irrelevant, in merely intellectual encounters. It implies the willingness to be vulnerable, and the willingness to confide in each other—the lack of which was largely responsible for Judas’ downfall.

Our spiritual relationships are based in the fact that we are also, in a way, dual creatures—sons and daughters of God, but also material human beings with all the fears, doubts, joys, sorrows, desires, and distractions of our animal-origin evolution. Our humanness isn’t inherently bad, though. It has a value greater than we may ever understand—otherwise why did God chose us to give the gift of his spirit to? Why did Jesus say that we are not to love just the souls of our fellow human beings but to love them?

We reach the degree of trust we need through understanding each other enough to be aware of each other’s true motives—by trusting each other enough to confide in each other as true friends, not just like true friends. Friends don’t need friends to agree with them all the time. Their value to each other is their recognition of each other’s value, regardless of merely intellectual beliefs—and this recognition is also a gift from God that comes most surely and deeply by knowing God and feeling his infinite love and respect for each individual. When we freely receive this, how can we not freely give it? If we’re not giving it freely, doesn’t it have to be because we’re not truly aware—in our hearts, not just in our minds—that we’re receiving it? Then we need to get aware of this, and help each other do so. Our world doesn’t need us to be merely a cosmically well-informed community. It needs us to be a deep community—a spiritual family.

We have a common father, and a common mother in the Supreme and in the Divine Minister who is part of the Spirit of Truth, always directing our attention, the direction of our growth, to the Father and the Son. They’re immediately present with us at all times, leading us to the truth of Father’s will for us in all our experiences in this world. Exchanging our minds for the mind of Jesus is not a hopelessly complicated and ridiculously idealistic idea. It actually simplifies our experience. It doesn’t mean giving up our minds. It means making them like his, and it happens little by little whenever we simply remember him and include him in our present experience and choices. If we help each other practice this awareness, it will lead to our unbroken consciousness of his spirit, and Father’s, and deepen, enrich, and delight us in ways that make all our decisions clearer and more certain of spiritual success.

He doesn’t make decisions for us, but how much easier and simpler it is to choose God’s way when you’re in his or Jesus’ presence, who are not concerned so much with what decision we make but how we make it—what we take into consideration in doing so—what our motives are. There’s no way that we can ever figure out God’s will, and we have no need to when we’re aware of the presence of Jesus, because his spirit tells us what God’s will is in every situation much more clearly and deeply than our intellects can. This remembering of his immediate companionship would be made so much easier if we all reminded each other of it, directly or indirectly, whenever we felt we could use such reminding.

God’s will in any situation is something we have to “wait upon,” not try to figure out, and when we wait upon it in the right way, by simply remembering his presence with us, it comes to us. He’s with us whether we’re heroically confronting obstacles or just sitting around picking our noses, and his love for us is the same in both cases. When we actually realize this, that he’s with us not as a judge or a taskmaster but as a father who believes in us and loves us more than we can imagine, not ready to pounce on our every mistake but foreseeing them without their affecting his love for us whatsoever, knowing we’ll learn and grow from all of them and wanting to be with us through all of them and their consequences, we won’t spend a lot of time doing the equivalent of sitting around picking our noses. We also won’t spend much time doing the equivalent of trying to figure out how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.

Dedicating ourselves to being with God as a group makes it much easier to do so individually. Our natural propensity is to stray from our awareness of his spirit into the sea of distractions around us. What keeps us from evolving spiritually is forgetting where our primary responsibilities and potentials lie—in our relationship with Father and in serving the need to find him of those who have not yet found him.

Being with Jesus is not some sentimental idealistic ritual—it’s at the same time the most challenging, strengthening, inspiring, and comforting experience we can have—one so rich that we’ll do anything to stay in it once we really experience it, and will want everyone else to have it as well. That wholehearted desire is the only thing that can enable us to fulfill our responsibilities in this life in the deepest way we can.

Familiar as they are to many of us, could anything be more clear than these words of the midwayers:

“In Jesus the universe produced a mortal man in whom the spirit of love triumphed over the material handicaps of time and overcame the fact of physical origin…

…mankind languishes and stumbles along in moral darkness because there are so few genuine second-milers—so few professed followers of Jesus who really live and love as he taught his disciples to live and love and serve.

The call to the adventure of building a new and transformed human society by means of the spiritual rebirth of Jesus’ brotherhood of the kingdom should thrill all who believe in him as men have not been stirred since the days when they walked about on earth as his companions in the flesh…

If [Urantia Book students—my substitution] would only dare to espouse the Master’s program, thousands of apparently indifferent youths would rush forward to enlist in such a spiritual undertaking, and they would not hesitate to go all the way through with this great adventure…

The true church—the Jesus brotherhood—is invisible, spiritual, and is characterized by unity… this brotherhood is destined to become a living organism in contrast to an institutionalized social organization. It may well utilize such social organizations, but it must not be supplanted by them…

The great hope of Urantia lies in the possibility of a new revelation of Jesus with a new and enlarged presentation of his saving message which would spiritually unite in loving service the numerous families of his present-day professed followers.

…the supreme purpose of life [is] the development of a majestic and well-balanced personality…

High-gear spiritual performances must await the new revelation and the more general acceptance of the real religion of Jesus.”

And these words of Jesus himself, who even now watches over and guides us, if we will, to be loyal to these teachings: 

“You should give ear to my words lest you again make the mistake of hearing my teaching with the mind while in your hearts you fail to comprehend the meaning…

I have lived the God-revealing bestowal that you might experience the God-knowing career…

I admonish you ever to remember that your mission among men is to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom—the reality of the fatherhood of God and the truth of the sonship of man. Proclaim the whole truth of the good news, not just a part of the saving gospel…

That which the world needs most to know is: Men are the sons of God, and through faith they can actually realize, and daily experience, this ennobling truth…

I lived my life in the flesh to show how you can, through loving service, become God-revealing to your fellow men even as, by loving you and serving you, I have become God-revealing to you…

Love all men as I have loved you; serve your fellow mortals as I have served you. Freely you have received, freely give…

I will go with you into all the world. I am with you always, and my peace I leave with you.”

It is his peace and all it means—the realization of sonship in our hearts, not just in our minds—that our world most needs from us. It’s the essence of our duty here, which we need to commit to doing all we can to fulfill. Our instructions couldn’t be plainer. We have them. We have had them for the better part of a century in a form unencumbered by dogma and ecclesiastical traditions. Will we take up this responsibility that has been given us?

Apart, for any one of us, it would be an awesome task, but together we can find ways to actually accomplish it, in our individual lives and in the life of our selflessly dedicated Urantia family, helping each other find ways to serve as God needs us to serve our world. Of course we should continue to sell books, but does anyone seriously think we have a right to be satisfied with ourselves for that? We’re on trial before the bar of human need, and though the judges we stand before are merciful, the more we know, the more is expected of us, and the more is given us to fulfill it. Let’s believe that so it can be proven to us, and shift now into a higher gear. 

I follow my father into the day.

I follow my father along the fence

to the watermelon patch.

I follow my father into the cornfield

when the day comes down.

I will follow my father wherever he goes.

                                                            – Jan Wikima, Hopi, age 7

If we are a nation of laws, this booking photo must be taken.

Steven Weber.

[F]or George Bush, introspection is yet another thing he’s heard about that a guy in his position oughtta do from time to time.  After all, he will have been a two-term president and he can afford, after all the heavy lifting he’s done, to be philosophical (another thing he’s heard guys like him oughtta be from time to time).

But reflection is impossible if there’s no light. Or intellect. Or wisdom. Or truth. Any analysis he could offer on virtually any subject would be severely handicapped at conception, born into this world already abridged and pre-regurgitated.

The Emperor’s New Clothes 2.0 that was the Bush 43 administration generates as much stunning incredulity for its blatant Orwellian Newspeak bullshit quotient than for the actual deeds themselves so ably performed by the neo-con goon squad in the names of Profit and Power. It suggests not mere political obfuscation or slick sleight of hand practiced by pickpockets working a crowd at a carny but the existence of an actual survival technique practiced by the über-wealthy and über-powerful: the creation of individually tailored truths, codes of behavior that have little to do with traditionally disseminated rules for peaceful coexistence by which the smaller, less affluent, less powerful, less important people live.

George Bush offers us wistful admissions of fallibility, as if that will assuage his despicable, destructive reign. He trusts that the little people themselves will not want to reflect on the damage so he, magnanimous god that he is, does it for us. But if, after all the celebration fades and an Obama government takes its turn there is no legal and/or highly visible reckoning of BushCo’s treasonous, historic misdeeds then we are the ones in serious need of reflection.

It has always been us who are in need of deeper, more profound reflection. But if reflection is only possible when there’s light, where does that light come from?

Congressional democrats? Constitutional scholars? Liberal media??  Don’t make me verp.

Jesus said that he was the “light of the world.“ And he told us to let our light so shine before men that they may “see your good works and be led to glorify [our] Father.”

The light by which we must do our reflection on the deeds of George Bush and Dick Cheney must be one of divine truth and eternal justice.  Yes, there is a semblance of justice and truth in the laws set out in our constitution, but we have all been witness to how easily they have been distorted, trampled upon, and cast aside during this last eight years of the Bush debacle.

What is needed now is a new benchmark for justice.  One based on a higher and more profound recognition of the reality of mankind, one that involves the very highest morals and ethics known to man.  One that still has its roots based in the “Golden Rule“—  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Do we, as a nation, as a race of human beings, desire to live by the rule of law and the ways of justice?  Then we must actually live our lives accordingly, and demand that our elected officials do so as well.  If there is no accounting, there is no justice.

No, not theee Apocalypse, the January issue of the magazine.
Notice the St Alphonzo’s Pancake Bush uses for a halo.

I’m still annoyed that so many Christians are concerned about the supposedly impending destruction of the world as their apocalyptic myth would have it, and yet remain in total denial of the impending destruction of the world as it is actually unfolding via global ecological disaster.  The best way to follow their endtimes fetish is, of course, through Apocalypse magazine.

Bush made the January cover, and for good reasons. He’s actually done more to bring the rudiments of an apocalypse to fruition than all of it’s other advocates combined.  They talk the talk, but Dub walks the walk.  And he walks this walk because he claims God told him to.  Plus he has balls the size of Winnebagos, and they’re made of unmitigated gall:

An ah jist— I can not speak strongly enough about how we must collectively git after those who kill in the name of— in the name a some kinda false religion.
George Bush— Press appearance with King Abdullah of Jordan, Aug. 1, 2002

And George’s method of speaking strongly enough about it is, of course, to kill them in the name of his religion.

The feature article, “Daily War On Terror— A Mission From God” is written by infamous Blues Brother, Elwood Blues:

Bush has made the claim he’s “On a Mission from God.”  As someone who’s been on an actual mission from God, I can tell you with some confidence, that’s a bunch of bullshit.  The way my brother Jake and I recognized we were on a real mission from God was that things, like, just fall into place.  Even before the smokies chased us into that mall, I knew they would never catch us.  And they didn’t, until we had accomplished the mission.

George Bush put up a banner saying “Mission Accomplished,” not because God told him to, or because things were falling into place, but because he simply decided the mission was accomplished.  He’s “The Decider,” ya know.

•

And we base it, our history, and our decision making, our future, on solid values. The first value is, we’re all God’s children.
—Washington, D.C., Jul. 16, 2003

•

But the real ass-kicker article is from Heeza Lunatik:
“Love KILL Your Enemies.”

There can be no greater example of Bush’s arrant hypocrisy than his early-on discarding of Jesus’ most powerful teaching of the requirements of Love;  his instruction to “Love your enemies.”  Rather than accept the challenges inherent in such a bold and advanced moral position, Bush chose the path of traditional murder, which masquerades under the name “war.”  And he appropriately named his war of terror,  the “War on Terror.”

Bush prosecutes his wars under his interpretation of God’s messages to him.  Pointing to God’s gift of freedom to all men, he bestows the, “God’s Liberator of Men” mantel upon himself.  If the “first value” is, “We’re all God’s children,” then God’s Liberator is a mass murderer of God’s children.  I imagine Bush’s  judgment day explanation will be even more arrogant than it is today.

The disease of hypocrisy must rot the brain from the inside out.  Why else would Bush not recognize the absurdity of making statements to other thinking, sentient creatures, i.e., “people,” like this one:

It’s also important for people to know we never seek to impose our culture or our form of government. We just want to live under those universal values, God-given values.
—Washington, D.C., Oct. 11, 2002

It’s not enough to point out and ridicule such a ridiculous lie.  After seven years in Afghanistan and Iraq, with staggering loss of life, billions upon billions of dollars worth of the fruit of our people’s labor squandered, stolen, wasted, and lost, there must be an accounting.  And that is coming right soon.

“Justice makes a nation great, and the greater a nation the more solicitous will it be to see that injustice shall not befall even its most humble citizen. Woe upon any nation when only those who possess money and influence can secure ready justice before its courts!  It is the sacred duty of a magistrate to acquit the innocent as well as to punish the guilty.  Upon the impartiality, fairness, and integrity of its courts the endurance of a nation depends.  Civil government is founded on justice, even as true religion is founded on mercy.”
—Jesus speaking in The Urantia Book

“Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
( Click )

KAILUA —  Like a lot of people, my wife and I like the Windward shore of Oahu for supreme relaxation and a touch of paradise.  So too, does the Obama family.  We had heard they would be taking a short vacation somewhere nearby, but I didn’t think much of it.  After all, he was born on the island so it makes perfect sense he would want to relax with his family there.

My habit is to get down to the beach for the sunrise every chance I get.  And yes, I sit like a bump on the great log that washed up there many months ago.  I sit and let the star light warm my face until it soaks all the way into my soul.  Some mornings I’ll shiver a bit, but this morning was perfect.  I usually have my eyes closed for minutes at a time, but they opened on there own.  And there he was, walking along alone, without a care in the world;  the president-elect.

“Hey,” he said.  Just “Hey.”

I’m not sure I got anything at all out of my pie hole before he casually reached into the surf, rescuing a small plumeria flower.  He just held it there for a few seconds, turning it slowly in the gentle light of the morning.  Then this:  “Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”  Without missing much of a beat I said, “And if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is cut down and cast into the fire, how much more shall he clothe you, the ambassadors of the heavenly kingdom.”

He smiles.  “So you know your Bible?” he asked, and I felt his look.  Like you, probably, my brain usually runs without the benefit of a throttle engaged, and it managed to cram in a few thoughts even before I can answer…  Like, he thinks you’re an old hippy on the beach, probably stoned, and probably thinking he should be on his way…
“Actually that’s not from the Bible,” I mutter.  He raised his chin as he considered that, and I said something like, “Not everything Jesus said wound up in the Bible. . . but in other books. . .”

“Yep, I’m sure that’s true. You live around here?”  We wade right into the small talk, while my brain is working overtime with things like, “He’ll be saying ‘Take it easy, now’ any second, and jogging off down the beach.”  I don’t look around for the Secret Service, I just know they’re there. But after a bit it’s really clear;  we’re having a conversation.

I’m on vacation, and I know he is, too. For every way that my problems are his problems, I know it would be sadly wrong to talk about anything remotely like the shit that’s on our national plate right now, right here. He’ll have to start shoveling it soon enough.  So I paddled a few strokes into the vein he started.

“I imagine that talk with the apostles wasn’t about lilies, but about self-support.  Jesus was telling them, probably for the umpteenth time, that if they dedicated their lives to the work of the kingdom, all their real needs would be supplied.  To seek the greater thing, and the lesser will be found therein;  to ask for the heavenly, and the earthly will be included.  The shadow is certain to follow the substance.”

He had listened politely, even attentively, and studied me carefully.  He sat down on the log, and shoved his toes into the sand.  He spoke softly. “You know, that’s the kind of faith and hope we are in such need of right now, even though many of us already have it.  It’s infectious.  And it’s such an crucial part of our success.”  An outrigger canoe made its way across the sea in front of us before he continued.  And people around the world are hungry for our nation to live up to our deepest values, you know… and, it’s time we not only live up to them, but take them even higher… make them real for as many as we possibly can.”

I nodded in agreement.  We talked a few more minutes, mostly about how to watch and work against fear, and doubts.  And for a few brief moments, I sat with Barack Obama, relaxed and contemplative, watching the gentle Lanakai waves roll in, and roll away again.  Just two biped creatures of some evolving nation, on some evolving planet in a vast universe;  sharing the same time and space.

We wished each other a Happy Holiday.  And a Merry Christmas.  As he moved up the beach, I asked him if he’d stay in touch.  He said he’d try.  I believe he will.

Pastor Rick Warren

Juan Cole shared a spotlight with Pastor Rick Warren over the weekend, at the annual Muslim Public Affairs Council in Long Beach. His post is well worth reading, especially so for those who would rather get poked in the eye with a sharp stick than listen to Warren deliver the inauguration invocation.

Juan Cole:

I came away liking and looking up to Warren. In fact, I wonder whether with some work he could not be gotten to back off some of the hurtful things he has said about gays and rethink his support for Proposition 8.

And that is the appropriate area for wonder about Pastor Rick’s theology;  where the rubber of Biblical infallibility meets the asphalt of life in the fast lane. I trust Juan Cole’s personal estimation of Rick Warren as a genuine, likable, affable guy.  His dedication to spreading the gospel as he understands it, and his efforts to bend his religion towards the social problems of his own choosing, have earned him a dais from which he may further advance his agenda.

The difficulties arrive when, for whatever reason, Rick Warren is compelled to fall back to his essential fetishistic belief that the Bible is infallible.

“A doctrinal fetish will lead mortal man to betray himself
into the clutches of bigotry, fanaticism, superstition, intolerance,
and the most atrocious of barbarous cruelties.”
—The URANTIA Book

Wondering what kind of “work” would be required to get Warren to truly come to Jesus over his bigoted statements about gays might have to include waterboarding and other harsh techniques, but it’s just as unlikely to produce results that are any more genuine that what torture produces in general on anyone.

Yet the unfortunate self-imposed yoke of the infallibility of the Bible will always be the burden that turns otherwise honest and even admirable men (and women) into blathering, intolerant bigots, ever blinded to their own virulent hypocrisy.

It doesn’t really matter that Christianity’s slavish obeisance to the personal sexual mores of Paul lie at the roots of evangelical fundamentalism.  Rick Warren knows he will stand before the judgment alone;  that only he must answer for his words and deeds.  So what could hold him captive in the face of this truth?

The invocation of supposed divinely inspired writings led directly to the establishment of the authority of the church.  Imagine then, the enormity of the task that confronts a religionist like Warren, who’s personal authority stems from, not Jesus the “vine,” but that very same church.  Were Pastor Rick to come to the full realization of his unavoidable bigotry by wrongfully attributing Paul’s sexual peccadilloes  to God, he might find himself swimming upstream alone instead of standing on the bridge of the mighty U.S.S. Camelback.  Without that authority, Rick becomes the equivalent of a disgraced Ted Haggard, just with different “sins” in the eyes of other Bible fetishists.

Rick Warren has long been under fire by even more rabidly fundamentalist fetishists. 1, 2. But any difference between his fundy critics and himself isn’t meaningful to anyone living in the world outside their fetishism. Pastor Warren’s bigotry and say, Rev. Hagee’s, is simply one of degrees.

What an example Rick Warren could become to millions of other evangelical fundamentalists if he could experience his own epiphany, recognizing his faith in God has next to nothing to do with his belief in the Bible;  that faith in God is not dependent upon any fetishistic belief in any scripture.

Well.  Stranger things have happened.

The Sermon On The Mount (section) •• Carl Boch

When the crowds who came to hear Jesus teach began to include many of his bitter enemies, he explained his decision to teach in parables this way:  “I will present my teaching in a parable, so that you may each take for yourself that which finds a reception in your heart.” And the following excerpt from the UB explains in greater detail his attitude towards wealth:

Jesus worked, lived, and traded in the world as he found it. He was not an economic reformer, although he did frequently call attention  to the injustice of the unequal distribution of wealth. But he did not offer any suggestions by way of remedy. He made it plain to the three [apostles] that, while his apostles were not to hold property, he was not preaching against wealth and property,  merely its unequal and unfair distribution. He recognized the need for social justice and industrial fairness, but he offered no rules for their attainment.

He never taught his followers to avoid earthly possessions, only his twelve apostles. Luke, the physician, was a strong believer in social equality, and he did much to interpret Jesus’ sayings in harmony with his personal beliefs. Jesus never personally directed his followers to adopt a communal mode of life; he made no pronouncement of any sort regarding such matters.

Jesus frequently warned his listeners against covetousness, declaring that “a man’s happiness consists not in the abundance of his material possessions.” He reiterated, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” He made no direct attack on the possession of property, but he did insist that it is eternally essential that spiritual values come first. In his later teachings he sought to correct many erroneous Urantia views of life by narrating numerous parables which he presented in the course of his public ministry.  Jesus never intended to formulate economic theories; he well knew that each age must evolve its own remedies for existing troubles. And if Jesus were on earth today, living his life in the flesh, he would be a great disappointment to the majority of good men and women for the simple reason that he would not take sides in present-day political, social, or economic disputes. He would remain grandly aloof while teaching you how to perfect your inner spiritual life so as to render you many fold more competent to attack the solution of your purely human problems.

Jesus would make all men Godlike and then stand by sympathetically while these sons of God solve their own political, social, and economic problems. It was not wealth that he denounced, but what wealth does to the majority of its devotees.

This parable, Dividing the Inheritance, is also known as “the parable of the foolish rich man.”

Let me tell you a story of a certain rich man whose ground brought forth plentifully; and when he had become very rich, he began to reason with himself, “What shall I do with all my riches? I now have so much that I have no place to store my wealth.” And when he had meditated on his problem, he said: “This I will do; I will pull down my barns and build greater ones, and thus will I have abundant room in which to store my fruits and my goods. Then can I say to my soul, soul, you have much wealth laid up for many years; take now your ease; eat, drink, and be merry, for you are rich and increased in goods.”

But this rich man was also foolish. In providing for the material requirements of his mind and body, he had failed to lay up treasures in heaven for the satisfaction of the spirit and for the salvation of the soul. And even then he was not to enjoy the pleasure of consuming his hoarded wealth, for that very night was his soul required of him. That night there came the brigands who broke into his house to kill him, and after they had plundered his barns, they burned that which remained. And for the property which escaped the robbers his heirs fell to fighting among themselves. This man laid up treasures for himself on earth, but he was not rich toward God.

When Jesus had finished his story, another man rose up and asked him: “Master, I know that your apostles have sold all their earthly possessions to follow you, and that they have all things in common as do the Essenes, but would you have all of us who are your disciples do likewise? Is it a sin to possess honest wealth?” And Jesus replied to this question: “My friend, it is not a sin to have honorable wealth; but it is a sin if you convert the wealth of material possessions into treasures which may absorb your interests and divert your affections from devotion to the spiritual pursuits of the kingdom. There is no sin in having honest possessions on earth provided your treasure is in heaven, for where your treasure is there will your heart be also. There is a great difference between wealth which leads to covetousness and selfishness and that which is held and dispensed in the spirit of stewardship by those who have an abundance of this world’s goods, and who so bountifully contribute to the support of those who devote all their energies to the work of the kingdom. Many of you who are here and without money are fed and lodged in yonder tented city because liberal men and women of means have given funds to your host, David Zebedee, for such purposes.

But never forget that, after all, wealth is unenduring. The love of riches all too often obscures and even destroys the spiritual vision. Fail not to recognize the danger of wealth’s becoming, not your servant, but your master.”

Bold, my emphasis

The Prodigal Son • by Clark Kelly Price

The Parables of Jesus are unparalleled spiritual lessons, and their complete accounts in The Urantia Book are a priceless contribution to contemporary generations. The Urantia Papers say that the parable of the prodigal son was Jesus’ favorite, and he often told it with the Parable of the Lost Sheep, and the Lost Coin, to illustrate how thoroughly the Divine searches for all who are “confused, confounded, or otherwise spiritually blinded by the material cares and accumulations of life.”

If you have never heard this parable, or only know the second-hand account from the Bible, reflect on the fact that the Son of Man created this story, not just for the confused and confounded souls of his day, not just for all future residents of our world, but for every lost soul on each and every world of a projected ten million inhabited planets.

So.  In the words of Jesus.  The Parable of the Lost Son.

And now I would like to tell you the story of a thoughtless son of a well-to-do farmer who deliberately left his father’s house and went off into a foreign land, where he fell into much tribulation. You recall that the sheep strayed away without intention, but this youth left his home with premeditation. It was like this:

A certain man had two sons; one, the younger, was lighthearted and carefree,  always seeking for a good time and shirking responsibility, while his older brother was serious, sober, hard-working, and willing to bear responsibility. Now these two brothers did not get along well together; they were always quarreling and bickering. The younger lad was cheerful and vivacious, but indolent and unreliable; the older son was steady and industrious, at the same time self-centered, surly, and conceited. The younger son enjoyed play but shunned work; the older devoted himself to work but seldom played. This association became so disagreeable that the younger son came to his father and said: “Father, give me the third portion of your possessions which would fall to me and allow me to go out into the world to seek my own fortune.”  And when the father heard this request, knowing how unhappy the young man was at home and with his older brother, he divided his property, giving the youth his share.

Within a few weeks the young man gathered together all his funds and set out upon a journey to a far country, and finding nothing profitable to do which was also pleasurable, he soon wasted all his inheritance in riotous living. [Read more →]