Dear Friends, I would like to share with you my thoughts about the future growth of URANTIA Brotherhood. These ideas reflect my interpretation of certain experiential and revelationary insights, I call them “principles of growth” for spiritual organizations:
We must saturate ourselves in patience. There seems to be a natural tendency by many of us to become overly excited with the on-going prospect of disseminating The URANTIA Book and its teachings. I think the lowly tadpole sets the wisest example for us: the fastest and most efficient way for a tadpole to achieve the experiential status of a frog is for it to live ably and loyally as a tadpole. Evolution has its own timetable. The slower the pace, the lesser the chance for error.
Collectively/individually, our private ministry must precede our public ministry. We must become inwardly mature before we can become outwardly effective. Can we teach truth, discern beauty, and demonstrate goodness unless our lives first are truthful, beautiful, and good? Jesus taught and lived by the spiritual proposition that the real measure of our righteousness is the degree to which people are drawn to us without us advertising our message.
We must use discretion, I believe a person can be blinded as much by too great an exposure to another’s light of truth as by the darkness of one’s ignorance. Premature public exposure of the Fifth Epochal Revelation could drown The URANTIA Book in a sea of controversy. It is a fact of life that when a book is criticized, often it is by people who are unwilling or unable to read it.
Trust our unseen friends and allies. The celestial beings seem to work tirelessly to present to us, individually/collectively, the opportunities for contacting potential readers of The URANTIA Book.
Relate to others. We must avoid the error of spiritual pride. Jesus taught us to deal in a positive way with differences of opinion and value systems. Appeal to the truth-oriented content in another’s beliefs. While the Fifth Epochal Revelation is planetary, bear in mind that there are numerous other valid (albeit partial) revelations on racial, cultural, or personal levels.
Work to restore the self-respect of others. This world has many emotional refugees-men, women, and children whose psychic handicap undercuts the progressive realization of their soul potential. Help some of them. Touch their lives. Pray for the power and wisdom to do this. However, as a friend to us all once remarked, the good we would do to others should be tempered by graciousness. In order to respect one’s fellows and to respect God, a person needs first to have a sense of dignity and to have some measure of self-confidence, the key elements in self-respect.