© 1996 David Kantor
© 1996 The Fellowship for readers of The Urantia Book
By David Kantor
The successful integration of strong spiritual passions with the needs of physical and social existence remains one of the primary unsolved problems of our age. Service as an expression of those passions has varied over the centuries. In one age this passion went so far as to encourage believers to fight in the Crusades.
No doubt this urge has been responsible for many unique and intriguing experiences of those individuals unselfishly dedicated to spreading an awareness of the God or religion of their lives. This urge is just as strong in our generation and how we respond to it is just as challenging as it was for our forebears.
By looking to traditions of the past, we may be able to better understand the opportunities which face us today as we march forward to the drumbeat of this ever-present urge to sow seeds of goodness for the benefit of the world.
The 17th century saw a rapid and radical shift of interest on the part of the best minds on the planet from religion to science and technology. A primary factor driving this change was a revulsion towards the religious fanaticism which followed the Protestant Reformation. Therefore, science was initially promoted not as a substitute for religion, but as an antidote to this religious fanaticism which was destroying European society.
During the 18th century, the technological, military and economic vitality of the West continued to grow. As a result, a large part of the world committed itself to Western ways, unaware that Western civilization itself was in a transitory phase and contained within it a serious, unsolved religious problem.
This is like buying a car without noticing that the manufacturer forgot to include a jack and spare tire. Sooner or later circumstances will bring the fact to your attention.
The Romantic backlash of the 19 th century muddied the waters and created much philosophic confusion. This trend found individuals trying to salvage spirituality by completely moving it into the domain of feeling, impervious to the ravages of rational inquiry. Many contemporary religious movements retain an anti-intellectual bias inherited from this period and, as a result, lack the rational tools which are essential for the integration of spiritual experience with factual reality.
Historian Arnold Toynbee emphasized that the reality of this spiritual crisis will inevitably rise to the surface and demand attention. He maintained that the West cannot avoid a re-encounter with its ancestral Judeo-Christian foundations and that this re-evaluation of its spiritual heritage may be the most significant crossroads.
There are many indications that this re-evaluation has indeed begun.
In the past century the intellectual engine of the Western mind, which has penetrated distant galaxies as well as the intricacies of the living cell, has been increasingly focused on the human situation itself and our religious traditions in particular.
Since the publication of Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus early in this century, a number of competent and even eminent scholars have produced significant new studies of Jesus. Now in the mid 1990 s, Jesus has become the subject of serious scholarly discourse to a greater degree than in any period since the fourth century. Heavily footnoted books about Jesus, intended for an academic audience, have found their way into local bookstores.
Twentieth century developments in the field of psychology, particularly the work of Carl Jung, have provided productive insights into the way in which mind forms images and symbols to represent spiritual experience. Late-century thinkers, such as Sallie McFague and Joseph Campbell, have expanded our understanding of the nature of the metaphoric and mythological contexts in which all thought is undertaken.
From the mid-20th century to present time, we have also seen a serious reconsideration of the issue of revelation. Keith Ward, Professor of , Divinity at the University of Oxford, recently delivered a lecture series devoted to the examination of revelation in the world’s religions.
A recent study done at Stanford University found that the main concern of students in Jewish seminaries across North America is how to bring a greater sense of spirituality into synagogue services.
True to Toynbee’s insight, the foundational precepts of Western religious culture are being carefully scrutinized as never before in history. Events are unfolding all around us in which it appears that it is time for The Urantia Book to inform those undertaking this re-evaluation.
The late Kenneth Boulding, in his book The Meaning of the Twentieth Century, discusses what he calls “the great transition.” The Urantia Book is less semantically benign in describing this phenomenon as “moral crosscurrents,” “sociologic rip tides,” “cyclonic transitions” and “philosophic chaos.”
Boulding views history itself as a record of the ebb and flow of ideologies through human communities. In his view an understanding of ideologies, of their inevitable appearance and of the circumstances under which they can be modified, is crucial knowledge during this challenging time in civilization.
His point is that the course of civilization will be shaped by ideology. Our task, as readers of The Urantia Book, is to determine whether we will create a competing ideology or focus on the transformation of those which already influence human affairs.
Boulding suggests that the great challenge facing those whose lives are devoted to shepherding humanity through this transition is to learn how to develop and implement strategies rather than propagate ideologies. Strategy here implies a focus on ideals and values rather than on ideas.
With the mid-century destruction of fascism and the collapse of communism, along with the continued materialistic secularism in Europe and North America, the West appears to have lapsed into a state of relative ideological quiescence (although I must confess to some concerns about smoldering combustibles in the religious right in North America).
It does seem, however, that the values and ideals of a culture would be most amenable to strengthening and uplifting during a period of ideological dormancy rather than when ideological high tides are engulfing culture.
The spiritual values contained within Judeo-Christian culture will no doubt shape the moral perspective of the next wave of ideology to develop in the West. As for the East, The Urantia Book implies that India is a virtual tinderbox awaiting the spark of a clear presentation of Jesus’ gospel. Islam, although highly divided internally, is surging in many parts of the world. Buddhism and Confucianism remain vital forces, and there are many other active religious cultures, each of which claims millions of adherents.
The global economy, with regard to travel and communication, provides a unique opportunity for the diffusion of spiritual insights between these major religious cultures.
We should bear in mind, however, Toynbee’s assessment that any culture which has imported Western patterns of social and industrial organization contains within itself a potential spiritual crisis similar to that which is unfolding in North America.
The former Soviet republics and Eastern Europe, where the moral and spiritual values of Judeo-Christian culture have been aggressively suppressed for 70 years, suffer from a devastation of their cultural morality. This morality springing from the religious life of the people is what makes civilization possible.
Such is the magnitude of the service opportunities and challenges which lie before us las temporary custodians of an epochal revelation at this juncture in planetary history.
At the close of his epic work, The Rise of the West, historian William McNeill says, “The burden of present uncertainties and the drastic scope of alternative possibilities … oppress the minds of many sensitive people. But great dangers alone produce great victories; and without the possibility of failure, all human achievement would be savorless.” Life in Jesus’ Palestine, in the China of Confucius, and in Mohammed’s Arabia was violent, risky and uncertain; hopes struggled with fears; greatness teetered perilously on the brim of disaster. We belong in this high company and should count ourselves fortunate to live in one of the great ages of the world.
Let us now study a cosmological context of service drawn from The Urantia Book. There are two fundamental facts upon which to develop this deeper understanding: the evolution of the Supreme and the fact of a personal universe.
Growing in our understanding of the nature of Supremacy enhances our appreciation of finite reality as a continual process of becoming. Whitehead provides a description of this process as “a creative advance into novelty.”
Finite reality is created anew each moment as a repercussion of the sum total of the choices which were made in the previous moment. Hence Whitehead’s description of the Supreme as “the consequent God.”
The reality of a personal universe is one of the great themes woven throughout The Urantia Book. From the Paradise Trinity to the mortals on the worlds of space, personalities and their relationships comprise the primary structural elements in the universe.
In the domain of the finite, that structure itself — the qualitative state of all the interpersonal relationships in the universe — is evolving toward an expression of Paradise perfection. Wisely and creatively contributing to this process is the essence of service.
For instance, all those families of universe personalities revealed in The Urantia Book are organized and classified on the basis of the service they render. Many of these spirit personalities appear to have been specifically designed to serve within relationships between other personalities, to interpose their facilitating presences within the relationship process itself.
The Urantia Book describes life as a “process which takes place between the organism and its environment.” Spiritual life can be described as a process which takes place between personalities.
For example, in this context the Angels of Family Life may be understood as functioning within the matrix of personal relationships between family members. Jesus is present for us in such a manner. He tells us that “wherever two or three of you are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of you.” His spirit presence manifests itself within our relationships.
Unselfish service is the attitude which Jesus challenges us to bring to all of our relationships. And as we do this, we participate in the actualization of the divine potentials which exist within and between every personality in this personal cosmos.
As we engage in the process of unselfish service, we bring into temporary existence a living context within which the spiritual forces around us can more effectively function.
The service undertaken by people in our world today constitutes a focal point for spiritual power to be administered directly into people’s lives. “Religion is only an exalted humanism until it is made divine by the discovery of the reality of the presence of God in personal experience.” (UB 195:10.1)
Another view of service is to see it as a genetic mechanism by which divine goodness is replicated and propagated through the living organism of the Supreme.
Worship opens the channel between the individual and the Father, through which divine goodness flows out into the Supreme through the mechanism of loving service. The deepening of worship and expansion of service are the means by which we increase our capacity to experience living spiritual reality.
There are some profound implications in the statement, “The faith of Jesus pointed … to the service-discovery of spiritual reality …”The Urantia Book indicates that this process of serving others is the domain in which we are most likely to discover the presence of divinity and experience its power for healing and growth.
Let us reflect on the meaning of the personal nature of service. As an ideal presented by Jesus, service is a mode of personal conduct.
The most important domain of service we encounter is our immediate family, the persons with whom we live and interact on a daily basis. If we have children, this service takes on added significance.
Our families must be central to any consideration of progression or service in a personal universe. Close to this domain of the family are the personal relationships in which we participate as we live in our communities.
Spiritual service is meaningless apart from participation in human communities. It implies getting to know people and entering into a sharing of the spiritual journey with them.
Consider the difference between saying that we want to “serve the Father’s purposes” as contrasted with saying that we want to “serve the Father.” The first is an idea; the second, a living person. A subtle distinction perhaps, but very important because devotion to an idea takes us farther and farther away from the living domain of service, away from the domain of relationships between personalities.
Not only does The Urantia Book present service as an ideal, it clearly states that an increased urge to service is an inevitable repercussion of genuine religious growth. Given the stimulus which this text provides to such growth, we can be certain that the urge to service on the part of the readership is going to be high.
And so we find ourselves on a world desperately in need of spiritual service, with an understanding of service as a means of making divine assistance available to that world, and a powerful revelation which itself creates a strong urge to serve.
Our current situation is similar to the moment when the booster rockets drop away from the space shuttle as it arcs into orbit, ready to begin its mission.
Will we be able to wisely provide coordination and education which will help empower, strengthen and encourage individuals to “release them for heightened activities as kingdom builders?”
Will our readership “… quickly supply the leadership and inspiration requisite for the social, moral, economic, and political reorganization of the world?”
The tasks of our organization with respect to book publication and distribution is fairly straightforward. But successfully managing the inevitable social, psychological and spiritual upheavals which will follow in the wake of any religious stimulus as powerful as The Urantia Book is an entirely different matter.
This is the single-greatest challenge looming on our horizon as an organization. Fostering a readership culture which consistently promotes and reinforces values of sincere worship and unselfish service is the only solution. It’s the solution to the problem of religious fanaticism which Jesus himself gives us.
We must see our task as transformation through service.
Think about the second garden when considering service. For generation after generation, the most capable individuals went out into the world on their mission of uplift.
These descendants of Adam and Eve literally carried the seeds of cultural civilization to remote regions of the planet instead of remaining in Mesopotamia and actualizing a high civilization of their own. Likewise, the Melchizedek missionaries appear to have followed a plan of dispersion rather than a coalescence of cultural power.
Jesus instructed his followers to carry the gospel of the kingdom to the uttermost parts of the world.
Clearly in each of these examples, the emphasis has been on maximizing distribution rather than creating infrastructure. It is essential that values rather than ideology, that worship and service rather than political and legal infrastructure, become the central matters with which our organization concerns itself.
It is our challenge to nurture an aggressive and dynamic force for responsible and creative spiritual service unencumbered with the burdens of restrictive ideology or the maintenance overhead of excessive organizational infrastructure.
Rising to this challenge demands that we continue the process of weaning ourselves from the preoccupation with the apocryphal assumptions and stories which have conditioned our movement for the past 40 years.
It demands that we abandon the paralyzing fear that if we try to spread the book, we might somehow be interfering with some secret timetable or mandate.
Likewise, we must take responsibility for coordinating a course of creative action based upon our best understanding of the message derived from the text itself.
This challenge demands a wholehearted personal commitment to unending moral, spiritual and intellectual growth. It demands that we each develop a critically self-corrective philosophy of religion and service.
Most important of all, we must take advantage of this privilege of worship and learn to look “to the One for the inspiration of service to the many.”
May we have the wisdom to foster a readership culture which can serve as a keel for that social ship currently steaming out of the harbor rather than as its anchor. Let us work hard to promote a readership culture which can serve as a community of mutual support and guidance, helping each of us to go out into the world and become more effective in the serviceactualization of the kingdom of heaven.
David Kantor, San Francisco Bay area, has been a member of the General Council for two years. This paper is the basis of a presentation which Kantor made to the General Council at its mid-year meeting in January 1995.