© 2005 Charles Laurence Olivea
© 2005 The Urantia Book Fellowship
Very likely, our movement will continue to decentralize into many forms while the world experiences its national and planetary vicissitudes. There will undoubtedly be an increase in the number of experiments as to how best to disseminate The Urantia Book and its teachings on different levels. The best ones may persist as examples of what the world will need in order to reform itself.
This grand work we are engaged in is decidedly evolutionary in character. We possess a leavening power, not a revolutionary one. This is why I think only the “long view” of our future prospects will serve us effectively in our collective effort to improve evolutionary progressive civilization.
I think the following critical factors may be influential in what we do in the next fifty years and beyond:
Since its publication in 1955, the dissemination of The Urantia Book has operated with certain intrinsic constraints that will continue to govern the future course of our movement. These constraints are not arbitrary or coerced; rather, they stem from certain habits of mind born of human nature and reinforced in human experience. It appears that to date most people are not sufficiently curious-minded to be drawn to The Urantia Book either in the first place or to remain with it for the duration of their lives. No doubt for many generations to come this will remain true. In time, this may change when people value quality of mind over a material standard of living as the main focus or goal of modern society.
We should always remember that what is presented to a person is usually quite different than how that person perceives the presentation. The difficulty of “winning over” large numbers of people to this revelation in our time lies less, I think, in our actions than in the way most folks are culturally suited.
From what I have observed, we tend to attract individuals who are very different from the norm. This is why the selectiveness of the person-to-person approach in the last fifty years, honed through an informal network of study groups, has heretofore produced the best results in terms of lives committed to the revelation. Given people’s general habits of mind (stated as a constraint, not as a negative criticism), I believe that our appeal will most likely remain for the next fifty years and more to individuals with a peculiar or unusual attitude about things and beings.
The only unifying factor or commonality I can identify for us who have a lifetime devotion to The Urantia Book and its teachings is a profound curiosity about facts, meanings, and values reflected in science, philosophy, and religion. In other words, we seem to attract and keep people who possess the spiritual certitude found in a living faith coupled with intellectual open-mindedness. It is an interesting combination of mind and spirit. By its very nature, The Urantia Book, in my view, can only have a lasting appeal to those who are ready to pursue the search for truth, beauty, and goodness in the nonlinear sense of facts, meanings, and values, even if they initially do not or cannot articulate their motivation in quite that way. This seems to be what we share in common among ourselves and potentially with some others.
The appeal to mind and spirit is a great strength of the Fifth Epochal Revelation. This duality of mind and spirit inspires and elevates the evolutionary character of our movement. But it makes us directly dependent to a great extent on peoples’ willingness to be curious and to listen. I do believe that we can and should “whet the appetites of our associates for truth.” However, the only way I know how to do that is for us in our movement to so progressively transform ourselves that aspects of light and life will be readily apparent to others.
The “fastest” way I know to achieve this will be to “follow” Jesus: to love others as he loved them; to pray and worship spontaneously; to study other cultures diligently; to glory in labor as service; and to make the same leap of living faith that he did when he walked among us. The religion of Jesus has the power to quicken the advance of moral and spiritual behavior, although even that great force of mind and spirit relies on evolutionary time to fully savor such changes.
I think it is plain that the time for The Urantia Book to be received into the mainstream of the world will have to wait until the era of acute modern conflict involving warfare/ dogmatic contention is behind us. It is difficult to predict when that may happen. We may very well be facing a third world war if contemporary terrorists deploy and initiate the use of nuclear weapons on their enemies. In the 20th century, ideological struggles and the wars that accompanied them centered on racial supremacy (Nazism and Fascism) and economic determinism (Communism.) Today, they appear to revolve around religion, at least they use the lexicon of religion. There is a possibility of one to follow along East versus West lines if China decides to become imperialistic in Asia and the world.
In my view, these wars of mind and of body all stem from the same origin, i.e., fear and sin manifesting as a lust for power. The modern era is particularly dangerous because the world has become a neighborhood through modern science and technology without becoming a brotherhood, due to a relative lack in ethics and spiritual values (as suggested by Martin Luther King.) The menace lies in the mix of modern weaponry, global economy, and global village via the electronic media.
The willingness of a larger percentage of people to be openly curious in the search for truth, beauty, and goodness must await that time when people value the ideal of human unity and no longer insist upon uniformity of opinion, or when God’s children are willing to break bread together regardless of differing religious ideas and values. A faith-directed and open-minded curiosity requires clear thinking free from the intellectual/spiritual “static” of ideological and theological prejudice and bigotry intensified by warfare. Our movement should prepare itself for that day when many more of our fellows will be interested in hearing about a new, higher, and deeper explanation of the origin, nature, and destiny of the human race.
The positive side of the modern world and its global culture is the way it facilitates relationships and outreach. We, along with many other groups, have taken advantage of the Internet to communicate more effectively and with greater speed. In addition to improved technology, the global culture encourages greater interaction and interdependence among the world’s peoples. It values internationalism (and, for a small but growing number of people, the ideal of world government), along with interracial or ethnic admixtures in contrast to the divisive tendencies in nationalism, racism, and tribalism. It does involve a certain degree of commercial uniformity, but even that boosts internationalism. The impulse in modernity is to continue to evolve despite humanity’s moral, political, and spiritual liabilities.
It is given that newer and speedier forms of transportation and communication will emerge that can assist the effort to disseminate The Urantia Book with greater efficiency and mobility. Education, research, conferences, and the like will all probably benefit from these future developments. I think our work for the foreseeable future in forming new relationships and in fostering outreach will gravitate generally in a linear progression, e.g., the number of book sales and computer hits. The depth of our response to these new opportunities of the global culture will depend on how transformed we are by the teachings of The Urantia Book.
The future quality of leadership in our movement to a certain extent will be affected directly by some of the men and women who merit self-acting Adjusters. We know that there is a need for more of them and that the celestial authorities are very concerned about it. [UB 110:4.6] We are hardly in a position to knowingly influence this factor. It is largely up to our unseen friends and allies to make the necessary changes to increase the number of such persons, since they have the requisite capabilities. Nonetheless, to have more human beings who can work at significantly higher intellectual and spiritual levels is something worthy of prayer when we are contemplating the future direction of the movement.
The Second Coming, a materialization of Machiventa Melchizedek, a new planetary governing arrangement made materially manifest or the full and complete lifting of the quarantine on us would suddenly alter things for us on Urantia. Contact with another intelligent moral species could alter the “we versus they” mentality within the human race. A planetary disaster might do much the same. Any of these possibilities would present a new and different dimension to the opportunity and challenge of disseminating The Urantia Book and its teachings.
These and the romancing of other sudden changes can, and probably will, stimulate our imaginations for a long time to come. Even though we are quite limited in our ability to plan for sudden events of this magnitude, we should remain mindful of the truth that the “…quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole.” [UB 100:1.4]
The world does need a better, superior explanation of the gene pool, the basic causal relationship between biology and civilization, the home life, God and the universe, industrial/environmental/global economic systems, international power politics, world government, etc. Especially, the world needs to see Jesus’ true teachings exhibited in the lives of people. The challenge we are faced with is not only spiritual, but political, biological, moral, social, racial/ethnic, and economic. The Urantia Book can provide the “heavy lifting” for the world’s peoples, but only when they are freely willing to listen, discuss, and consider a greater range of possibilities for our world and the universe. Until then, I think it would be wisest for our movement to grow a sturdy and diverse foundation for the day when we may be asked to take on a leading role in planetary affairs.
With that future in mind, I think we ought to focus and internalize the following three dimensions of mind and spirit that are grounded in The Urantia Book:
We will probably be more instrumental in influencing human society through the leavening power of the teachings of The Urantia Book long before we can integrate the book itself into the mainstream of the modern world. I believe we should first emphasize the living spiritual strength in Jesus, but remain ever watchful to offer other facts, meanings, and values in this marvelous revelation that has brought a great LIGHT to our world! And may it help us to be increasingly more receptive to the grace of our beloved Universal Father!
Charles Laurence Olivea has read and studied the teachings of The Urantia Book for a long time now and has tried to live according to its higher learning. His life is marked by a conscious search for truth which led him to The Urantia Book and continues to hold his loyalty in helping to disseminate its teachings and the book. In this regard, he agrees with Gandhi, that his life has been an “experiment with truth.” When he graduates to the Mansion Worlds, he would like his life to be assessed, by any who might care to do it, in terms of the Fruits of the Spirit.
. . . Are you fearful, soft, and ease-seeking? Are you afraid to trust your future in the hands of the God of truth, whose sons you are? Are you distrustful of the Father, whose children you are? Will you go back to the easy path of the certainty and intellectual settledness of the religion of traditional authority, or will you gird yourselves to go forward with me into that uncertain and troublous future of proclaiming the new truths of the religion of the spirit, the kingdom of heaven in the hearts of men? [UB 155:5.13]