© 1997 Carolyn Prentice
© 1997 International Urantia Association (IUA)
| Conflict and Spiritual Brotherhood | Journal — March 1997 — Index | The Nature of God: Its Revelation in Jesus, The Son of Man |
Carolyn Prentice, Minnesota, USA
Almost all readers of The URANTIA Book will tell you that when they first picked up the book, they were drawn to it because it confirmed something which they had always believed. For some people, it was the Lucifer rebellion; for others, that God didn’t want blood sacrifice. Still others found that the scientific account of creation/evolution struck a chord. Readers are eager to share their stories about such “aha!” experiences.
But most of us have also had the opposite experience at times. We read something in this wonderful book that we don’t want to know, that we would prefer not to be true. Sometimes, we slam the book shut in protest and don’t open it again for months, even years. We don’t share as many stories about our struggle to come to terms with something we don’t want to believe, but it can be helpful to understand what others have had difficulty with. We read recently in the JOURNAL how one woman of Jewish heritage didn’t want to accept the Jesus part of The URANTIA Book. Some of us are dismayed to find out that enslavement, in its time and place, actually helped many races. My husband had trouble with the hierarchy — just another bureaucracy with its concomitant red tape. I myself — I blush to admit — thought The URANTIA Book was a sexist book.
I know, it seems silly to make such an attack since this is the book that reports on the women’s corps in Jesus’ ministry. This is the book that says that a planet is not considered “emerged from barbarism so long as one sex seeks to tyrannize over the other” UB 49:4.4. This is the book that points out that our local universes are created by a Creator Son acting in unison with a Creative Daughter. But in my experience what a movement or people profess, is often different from their real feelings, which come out in more subtle ways. I was suspicious. I could get past the language — God being the Universal Father (although on other planets He is the Universal Parent). I could get past the use of “man” to mean all human beings. I had trouble with other parts.
First of all, I had trouble with the Adam and Eve story. Okay, somebody had to make a mistake, and we women have been blamed through the centuries. I would have preferred for it not to have been true. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, women are told that we are impatient, that we “look upon immediate results” UB 75:2.4. And we had better not stray from our wiser, farther-seeing husbands’ sides! It’s not exactly the message a modern woman wants to hear. It sounded to me like veiled misogyny.
Second, I was upset by the pronouncement that the development of the father-family led to real civilization UB 84:2.7. In this modern day, women have often extolled the virtues of some native tribes that still believe in the mother-family. In fact, as marriages fail, more women, at least in the USA, find themselves single parents, and many children have only their mother-based family to call home. Women have risen to the task saying, “we can do it”; in fact, we have gotten so good at it, that we have questioned why a family has to be so father-based. To suggest that what we have returned to out of necessity is somehow inferior seems to imply that women are inferior at making families.
Third, the revelation that in his bestowals a Creator Son always appears as “a male child of the realm” UB 20:6.2 brought tears to my eyes, and I slammed my book closed in disgust. My husband was genuinely perplexed by my reaction. “It just doesn’t seem fair,” is all I could stammer out in explanation. Why would a Creator Son limit his bestowals in this way? Is only a male body worthy to house a Creator Son?
But I kept reading because I knew the book was true. But I struggled to put this whole gender issue into perspective. I wanted this book that was otherwise true to affirm that women are strong, that they are capable of creating good families, and that they should be offered the same opportunities as men. I had to plow on and trust that my Thought Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth would help me out. On my third reading of the book, I slowly began to understand.
Okay, Eve did make the mistake on this world. If I agree that men and women are different — and I do — then I have to agree that we have different faults. Wanting immediate results just might be one of them. The URANTIA Book doesn’t say that men are any better-they just have different faults. What I took as misogyny was my own one-sided defensiveness. Men are cast in equally unflattering lights. For example, it is pointed out that “Woman has always had to work… Man has usually chosen the easier path” UB 84:3.7. Men aren’t exactly innocent because Eve made a mistake. Many of the Prince’s staff-both men and women-also rebelled long before Eve defaulted. So women aren’t being singled out as inferior just because one female ancestor happened to make a mistake. It’s just a historical fact — yes, Eve figuratively took the first bite of the apple.
The father-family thing just dawned on me one day. I was thinking back about the birth of my children, how I immediately felt connected to them because they had been inside me, had come from my body. They were part of me. I am amazed, in some respects, that men can feel a bond with their children because that obvious physical connection is lacking. But that’s just it. A mother-family is a natural thing; mother-love is instinctive. Father-love, on the other hand, takes intellectual involvement, a commitment. In a way, fathers have to adopt their children in their minds and in their hearts. And such a commitment does represent a significant leap in civilization: a man’s urge to protect and nurture a being that is not so directly connected to him is an evolutionary advancement. Although women should be applauded for doing the best they can as single parents, the trend back to the mother-family is not a reassuring omen for society. We need father-families because they require commitment and responsibility by men, whose natural tendency would be to shirk this responsibility.
Finally, I have come to terms with the exclusion of the female gender in Creator Son bestowals. One thing we learn over and over again in The URANTIA Book is that we are all different and have different roles to play, but we are all essential. The universe is about diversity. To take it back to the very beginning, the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit are different from each other — three different personalities with three different realms. Yet they are one unified deity, as the Trinity. What would happen if the Infinite Spirit felt that he was missing something because he was different from the Eternal Father?
Instead of feeling cheated that women never get a Creator Son bestowed in their form, I should look at it in another way: The Creator Son doesn’t get to be a woman — that is withheld from him. Whether any other beings bestow themselves as women is not revealed, but I could postulate that maybe they are.
What would a universe be like if we all had the same roles? God loves us all and created us each to play our unique parts, male or female — apparently forever. The perfect Havona residents are hungry for experience — and yet that is not their role; they are existential. Angels, although they advance, will always be angels. The Creative Mother Spirit cannot leave her local universe. The Creator Son cannot bestow himself as a woman. All beings have some unique, secret experience on the sacred spheres of Paradise which can never be shared by unlike beings [UB 13:1.1]. We Urantians will be father-indwelt, other beings will be spirit-indwelt, and still others are merely what they are.
So I finally have come to peace with those parts of The URANTIA Book. I’m sure that I will have other battles. The key is to keep studying, keep reading, keep praying. Go forward with faith that you will eventually understand. What is remarkable is that The URANTIA Book can withstand such criticism, resentment, and scrutiny, and still emerge intact as a coherent and consistent guiding light, a source for dependable truth in a confused world.
| Conflict and Spiritual Brotherhood | Journal — March 1997 — Index | The Nature of God: Its Revelation in Jesus, The Son of Man |