© 2003 Claudia Ayers and Lee Smith
© 2003 The Urantia Book Fellowship
| The Origin of the Spiritual Fellowship | Volume 5, Number 1, 2003 (Summer) — Index | Anti-Terror Treatise |
“Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his brother.”
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra
The Urantia Papers have enriched our lives and guided our hearts and minds for virtually all of our adult lives. When we were novice readers, the phrase “the kingdom of heaven” brought forth very different mental images.
Lee: I had a bit of bible training, so the phrase “the kingdom of heaven” was familiar—from the timeless imagery of the parables to the mysterious prophecies concerning the return of Jesus. However, it was Jesus that spoke most directly to my soul when he said, “the Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21)
Claudia: The “kingdom of heaven” phrase brought me confusion. I had been exposed to very little church talk. “Kingdom” was not a word I had ever used in my world- view, It was relegated to fairytales and the school study of medieval Europe. To me, the word “kingdom” did not evoke mental images supportive of freewill or democracy, which were the mainstays of my global ideal.
Now, thirty years later, we are more seasoned readers, Our optimism that the Urantia Papers would imminently find a significant niche in society has considerably mellowed into more of a long View We have each had our revelation perspectives altered and tempered by the ongoing discoveries and somewhat perplexing depth and breadth of the human source contributions. Doubts about the nature and authenticity of our inspirational papers have surfaced in our minds.
Lee: Yet, regardless of authorship (whether human, divine, or both), I continue to appreciate “The Kingdom of Heaven” Paper for describing the kingdom concept so thoroughly and for explaining how the personal faith realization of the consciousness of entering the kingdom can be accomplished through the simple process of practicing “faith, sincerity” and “truth hunger” on a daily basis.
After the controversy and wrangling over the human source material has gone full circle, I surmise that the Urantia Papers—as a catalyst for spiritual transformation— will not have significantly suffered. I Still consider The Urantia Book, as a whole, an “epochal” revelation, but not necessarily a “divine” revelation. I am no longer proselytizing The Urantia Book as “sacred text.” Given the role that “sacred texts” have in fanning the flames Of fundamentalist-inspired conflicts all over the planet, I believe the distinction between “epochal” and “divine” (or sacred) is a reasonable one.
Claudia: The basis of my faith in God was my discovery and subsequent acceptance of the Urantia Papers. Accepting the Urantia revelation as “truth” required me to accommodate, one way or another, my distaste for such terms as “kingdom of heaven” and “Thought Adjuster” and to reconcile the near complete lack of gender inclusiveness in the language. To later discover that so much of the wonderful message in these papers came from human sources, and that much of it is inaccurate has been troubling to me, to say the least. I have had to completely examine my faith and find the truer inner source on which to base it. But now, I am rebuilding my cosmological framework on this inner, more durable, spiritual core. My faith is more humble. I have no more, and no less, of a basis for my faith than any Other mortal religionist.
By the power of group wisdom, amended with prayer and meditation, we have found that faith can be made more meaningful because of the process that doubt inspires. We find it quite amazing that in a relatively short time, our doubts have given birth to a newly inspired and richer faith.
Lee: It all really comes back to the conflict between doubt and faith with which we each have to personally come to grips. It is relatively easy to understand that doubt is fueled by fear. Real faith, as powered by God, is liberating and soul building.
Jesus, in his instructions for teachers and believers, admonishes: “There is but one struggle for those who enter the kingdom, and that is to fight the good fight of faith. The believer has only one battle, and that is against doubt—unbelief.” [UB 159:3.8]
Claudia: What did Jesus mean by “the kingdom of heaven?” He used it interchangeably with “the kingdorn of God,” and to his apostles he always taught the kingdom as embracing an individual’s personal experience in relation to others here on earth and to the Father in heaven. But Jesus was doing his best to offset the messianic belief that the chosen people would be displacing the “kingdoms of men” with a physical kingdom of God, and he further had to deal with a myriad of other factors of his day and age on earth that prevented his true meaning from being conveyed.
We find in paper 170, during Jesus’ last sermon in Pella, that he preached at length on the topic of the kingdom of heaven. “The great effort embodied in this sermon was the attempt to translate this concept into the ideal of the idea of doing the will of God. Long had the Master taught his followers to pray: ‘Your kingdom come; your will be done’; and at this time he earnestly sought to induce them to abandon the use of the term kingdom of God in favor of the more practical equivalent, the will of God. But he did not succeed.” [UB 170:2.11] I take this message to heart. I frequently remind myself of this personal truth by practicing this simple restorative meditation: I breathe in “Your will,” and breathe out, “be done.”[1]
Today’s spiritual community again stands in need of a concept to designate the power of faith and the transcendence of spiritual reality. The Kingdom of Heaven phrase was problematic 2000 years ago, and it appears to be just as unclear today. The persistence of terribly confused spiritual concepts is bringing our planet ever closer to fracture, if not destruction. The world needs unifying calls to faith.
Lee: Jesus struggled with shifting and uplifting the Jewish Messianic concept of the “kingdom” concept to the idea of “family fellowship” with God as our loving parent. We are told that he “sought to substitute many terms for the kingdom but always without success. Among others, he used: the family of God, the Father’s will, the friends of God, the fellowship of believers, the brotherhood of man, the Father’s fold, the children of God, the fellowship of the faithful, the Father’s service, and the liberated sons of God.” [UB 170:2.24]
For me, the kingdom of heaven is really built upon a pattern of personal relationships, and not on a framework of crystallized prose. This realization is an outgrowth of dynamic interaction between sincere truth seekers and divine inspiration.
Word symbols, however instructive, create their own limitations. We are told in the “Last Teaching at Pella” that we learn about God from Jesus by observing the divinity of his life, not by depending on his teachings… “never did Jesus say, ‘Whoso has heard me has heard God’. But he did say, ‘He who has seen me has seen the Father’. To hear Jesus’ teaching is not equivalent to knowing God, but to see Jesus is an experience that in and of itself is a revelation of the Father to the soul.” [UB 169:4.12]
Claudia: Each of us is connected to all Other living things. We are each linked to even the elemental structures and universe energies that spark, support, and sustain life. The living system some call earth, and others call Urantia, is either guided towards becoming increasingly sustainable, or it isn’t. Each of us has a hand in this planetary guidance.
As I write, we are on the brink of a war that can go one of two ways: closer to global community or further from it. (I like to use this spelling of community: Come-in-unity.)
We believe that Jesus would like all adults to view each child on the planet as one of their own. We believe this is the true meaning of unconditionally loving one’s children. Jesus gave us so many tips on how to do God’s will. He asked that we love one another in the way that he loves each of us, the way God loves each of us. If we start by loving all the children on earth, soon we progress to loving all the adults as well.
Human kingdoms are passing from the planet, but we hope and pray that inter-connecting human relationships are on the upswing. The call to faith may need to be reframed. It may Still be disuniting to state, “Come, enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Were Jesus walking on earth today, we believe he might again try to invoke a unifying theme with his compelling concept of family fellowship with our Heavenly Parent. Perhaps he would today be inviting us to “Come, enter the Universal Faith Community.”
Claudia Ayers has been a reader of The Urantia Book since her mother gave her a book in 1973. She has two daughlers in college, teaches high school math, and lives in Soquel, CA.
Lee Smith found The Urantia Book in 1975, and shortly thereafter started a study group in Santa Cruz, CA, which has continued in his home to this day. He has served with The Fellowship for many years and is currently the Chair of the Education Committee.
| The Origin of the Spiritual Fellowship | Volume 5, Number 1, 2003 (Summer) — Index | Anti-Terror Treatise |
We thank Diana Elwyn for sharing this, her personal meditation, with us. ↩︎