© 1989 Ann Bendall
© 1989 ANZURA, Australia & New Zealand Urantia Association
“The extent to which you have to go with your message to the people is, in a way, the measure of your failure to live the whole or righteous life, the truth-co-ordinated life.” (UB 155:1.5)
Maybe people are knocking on your door, asking what you have got and how they can acquire it, but they are giving mine a wide berth.
And out there in the big world I have had a few people observe a difference between me and themselves which they all labeled “crazy”! I have never found this perturbing because I totally respect the right of my brothers and sisters to call me what they will. But what makes me a little frustrated is that I have obviously not reached the stage where God shines through me, where I have this beautiful wholeness of righteousness which Jesus refers to on UB 155:1.5.
I would like to suggest, through 6-0-6, that we start accumulating ideas and hypothesis for what is “wrong” with folks like me.
UB 102:3.4 of The URANTIA Book says : “Religious experience is the realization of the consciousness of having found cod. And when a human being does find cod, there is experienced within the soul of that being such an indescribable restlessness of triumph in discovery that he is impelled to seek loving service-contact with his less illuminated fellows, not to disclose that he has found God, but rather to allow the overflow of the welling-up of eternal goodness within his own soul to refresh and ennoble his fellows. Real religion leads to increased social service.”
I just love talking about our Father and I have a few friends (non URANTIA Book readers) who are dedicatedly religious. One, in deep disgust, one day announced: “Am, all the churches are going to really have to clean up their act. They dare to make God a human God!”
I had hardly time to add any “hear! hear!” when she, with true enthusiastic zeal, continued: “They dare to say that God does not get angry. They paint a milksop God who is all love!”
I smiled to myself — if only the major emotion was love.
Back to my subject: “The element of error present in human religious experience is directly proportional to the content of materialism which contaminates the spiritual concept of the Universal Father. Man’s prespirit progression in the universe consists in the experience of divesting himself of these erroneous ideas of the nature of God and of the reality of pure and true spirit. Deity is more than spirit, but the spiritual approach is the only one possible to ascending man.” (UB 102:4.4)
I guess most of us had rather a confused idea of God if we were reared in evolutional religion. But, for myself, when I read, and each time I reread the first section on God, something sings inside me. My mind says — boy I would like to really understand how this is so, but I have no doubt that this is all truth, and a very good description of our Paradise Father. I appreciate so much more His — I cannot find the right words except — perfection, greatness, epitome of truth, beauty, goodness and, accepting and recognising Him in all His majesty, the book makes Him more lovable, more approachable despite the fact that he has zillions of planets, instead of the Bible idea of just one, which he was going to destroy anyway! (so what’s wrong with denuding it — destroying sea, forest, etc. — let’s get in before God does!)
Maybe my problem is that in my cesspool of emotions i an still clinging to characteristics of God from the old days. To my conscious knowledge this is not so. Maybe it is not that I am still “humanising” God, maybe I am confused on the Father — child images. Maybe I need a lot more education and growth in truth, beauty and goodness. Perhaps I’ve got to learn to love more with intelligence and wisdom.
We are told the giver of the golden thought likewise has the means of its manifestation — so if they are not knocking on my door, I must have a lot more to learn.
If there is any 6-0-6 reader who has his/her door regularly knocked on, could you give me a few practical tips! And please don’t tell me I’m impatient. Our Father knows what a hard lesson patience has been for me to learn. Maybe I am interpreting the book too simplistically, but I know I love God as my Paradise Father, and I love all His kids, and His will is my will, and so I am tossing the quandary to you readers for suggestions.
Ann Bendall, Nambour, Qld.