© 2022 Cristina Seaborn
© 2022 The Urantia Book Fellowship
by Cristina Seaborn and Friends
My mother passed away in July, 2021. For the first three days, I was in a dark mood wondering if she would continue her spiritual journey in three days as an atheist. Her motto was “Mi casa es su casa.” (My home is your home). She lived a thoughtful life, considerate of others’ needs, and went the second mile of loving service for people.
I asked my faith community through email this question: “Will my atheist mom resurrect from the dead?” The following are their responses, from all points of view, conservative to liberal. The opinions don’t necessarily reflect the direct teachings of The Urantia Book. Instead they are reflections and opinions regarding my question from people familiar with the contents of The Urantia Book.
These stories helped me process my mother’s passing. I hope these stories will help you in some way too.
Editor’s Note: The Urantia Book introduces the idea of successive stages of growth in the afterlife. In the first stage, you wake up after dying on Earth and realize that you have survived death. For the purpose of this compilation of articles, after we die, we are “resurrected” in a new form in a different location than Earth. After that first awakening, we realize that there is more to who we are than the material selves we once were. We discover that there is a path we can take to be less associated with matter and become more spirit led. As we become more spirit led, we have the opportunity to make an informed choice regarding our “eternal survival,” as we now understand such a possibility exists.
My late mother was the daughter of a prominent Christian minister in Indianapolis, Indiana. She married my father, a young Christian minister.
Later in her life, she taught English and reading skills to middle schoolers for a number of years. She began to have serious doubt, and though she expressed admiration for Jesus, she no longer accepted his divinity.
She was discouraged about the constant discipline problems she faced in the classroom. She was also influenced by philosophical discussions with fellow teachers, and with her adult niece who was an avowed atheist. All of this distressed me, but she made it clear that was how she felt and did not want to discuss it. Yet, as the years passed, she began to soften her thinking. She even began to plan the details of her memorial service, with quotes from the Bible. She was lonely due to the many deaths of friends and relatives. I counted her softening as an answer to my prayers.
I was unable to be with her when she passed away at 106 years of age. She had outlived most of her family and even some of her nephews and nieces. Fortunately, despite the COVID lockdown, my sister was able to get special permission to be at our mother’s bedside in her care home during that time.
My hope is that my mother will be there with my father when I graduate some day. I hold the same hope for others who worry about their loved ones. God is merciful.
Whenever this subject comes up, I always have to think of the first humans introduced in The Urantia Book, Andon and Fonta, and their immediate progeny. They certainly didn’t have a sophisticated belief system, initially. It seems to me that you would need to be incredibly primitive, almost animallike, not to be resurrected and eventually choose eternal survival.
My own late mother, an avowed atheist, will certainly be there to meet me when I arrive on the next level. She had negative experiences with religion, starting with an overly strict Catholic upbringing. She had a born-again Christian sister who drove everyone nuts trying to convert them under threats of eternal hellfire and damnation. In addition, her own husband (my dear dad) suddenly took up with Jehovah’s Witnesses when I was a child. He pursued door-to-door ministry for The Watchtower for a while instead of earning a living, until he quit the Jehovah’s Witnesses under the threat of divorce.
My mother, however, certainly had an indwelling spark of God within. Throughout her life, she was kind and loving but not because of religious belief. My misguided dad, who secretly entertained modified Jehovah’s Witness beliefs until the day he died, was one of the most loving and giving people I’ve ever known. He will certainly be waiting to greet me at the pearly gates as well!
If you have a spark of God within and you follow its leadings, then God couldn’t care less what your professed beliefs are!
I am pretty sure most of us make such momentous decisions regarding our eternal survival in the afterlife.
“Fear not” and “be of good cheer” seem to be an appropriate ending here. Jesus said these phrases often for good reason. Unbelievable and inconceivable mercy is at hand. We, each one of us, are loved, beyond our current capacity to understand such depth of love, by the creator of all things and beings.
If you have a spark of God within and you follow its leadings, then God couldn’t care less what your professed beliefs are!
I like the point that atheists are often rejecting organized religion and not God. Sometimes, the two have very little in common. We know that atheists don’t really even know God. They may have never been told anything they cared to believe about God. Maybe they are the heroes in our human story because they actually think about what they are being coerced to believe, and reject it because it makes no sense. Also, they can’t help being jaded when they have been so cruelly and harshly judged by well meaning “believers.” I think the God we know and love, who is so magnificently revealed by The Urantia Book, honors their decision to avoid organized religion as they understand it.
I like to imagine what a great sigh of relief there is in the afterlife for atheists who finally learn the truth about God and the universe.
I absolutely believe in a merciful universe and I’m a firm believer that every effort will be made (and is now being made) to save every soul in the universe. I agree that, for the most part, atheists are rejecting organized religion and not God. Upon resurrection, they’ll have every opportunity to realize the difference.
Cool, you survived death! Does that mean you’ll stop questioning authority, or you’ll be suddenly gifted with this courageous faith to accept this new reality with all of your old challenges? It’s not like we wake up and we’re given this grand tour as some five-star athlete getting a red carpet sales pitch, or that we get to meet the grand wizard on the other side of the curtain. Hard work will still be required. Forgiveness becomes much more real (both giving and receiving). Ego and pride must be relinquished as well as a sincere willingness to be humbled and recognize all who are on the same journey to become more spirit led.
I believe we can share the good news that lost and lonely souls can be brought into our cosmic family here on Earth. Our cosmic family is an evolving spiritual community of truth seekers working to enhance our spiritual perception and capacity for loving service. If I were to give a brief response to the question about atheists resurrecting from the deadchoosing God in this lifetime-I would say no, we don’t have to choose God on Earth to be resurrected.
I’m able to love because God loves through me. If I choose to love, consciously or unconsciously, God lives in and through me.
As a father, let me share what’s absolutely apparent to me. I am blessed with three wonderful children. I have done my best to bless them with love, mercy, and ministry. None of my children believe in a personal God. They look at the world around them and cannot reconcile the fact of a loving God with this sewage we swim around in. All three serve, all three love, and all three were raised with the ideal of forgiveness. They are peacemakers. They accept everyone around them with love. Each of them serves bravely and tirelessly in this world of despair we have inherited. They will resurrect, I have no doubt.
Our cosmic family is an evolving spiritual community of truth seekers working to enhance our spiritual perception and capacity for loving service.
Not for a moment do I believe my children don’t resurrect to make an informed choice for eternal survival. Cristina, you are the child of your mother. Did she love? Someone had to have taught you to love early on as witnessed by your ability to love all others that come in contact with you. We are all blessed by your presence around us. Your ability to love and promote peace and serve did not start with you. Who did it start with? Your mother provided that source of love which will never be denied. Your mother has a limitless future of amazing adventures in love.
My children, all children, biological or otherwise, need to be given a chance in an environment of love to see if they can choose to love. This applies to all children including mothers and fathers, because they were once children also. I don’t think God is ever in too much of a hurry to leave any of his children behind.
Yes, your mother will survive! I can feel her smile in my heart.
We are told that, when resurrected, we will remember that which had spiritual value in our lives. Which parent could ever say that their life with their children did not add to the spiritual value of their lives? So would we be resurrected remembering our children that did not survive? The only answer consistent with the creator I’ve come to love and devote my whole eternal life to is that all are welcome. All will have the opportunity to follow God’s infinite dreams for us, should we choose a life devoted to love, mercy, and ministry. How could our beloved creator act in any other way?
Unbelief is not tantamount to lack of faith. We make unconscious choices and conscious choices to do the will of God in different proportions.
How many in our world have come to reasonable conclusions to reject the existence of God but not to reject serving their fellow men and women in their lives or chosen occupations? Upon inspection, many have.
Conversely, how many have given lip service and pontificated profoundly about God and religion but are self-centered and selfserving? So, much of our assessment follows what we see on the face of the phenomenon of a person’s professed beliefs.
But unbelievers can have great faith in God-they live as though God is real-even though consciously they disavow a God concept that many of us would too, if we could see the rejected God concept that is abhorrent to those unbelievers.
We, thankfully, are poor judges of what transpires in women’s and men’s souls. We all could benefit from listening less to what others say and, rather, watching what they do.
God is very merciful. God would rather have you and I, his children, than not have us. Love is the dominant feature of God’s nature. So you know he really wants us.
I expect to encounter many atheists in the afterlife and to learn from them-many souls that our mere humanity in this life may have superficially condemned, but of which the provision for mercy in our universe thought better.
Since no one has yet proven that God exists, to an atheist (agnostic, etc.), God can be thought of as “all of the above,” “none of the above,” or just “not yet sufficiently defined” (regarding the question “What is God?”). Those who know God have experienced the fact of his presence in their personal experience. Atheists (agnostics, etc.) have not yet experienced these convincing personal interactions.
Imagine waking up in the afterlife: no pain, no chaos, being in safety and beauty, and surrounded by loving angels who know you and love you. And now all you will experience is being embraced fully by health, love, and light. What a glorious day it will be for every being from Earth who was suffering from physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual illnesses!
Freedom and joy arrives!
We will likely experience astonishment at the new reality we will find ourselves in. We will be better able to make an informed choice about eternal survival in that reality.
That will be a very enticing world to explore!