© 2022 Gard Jameson
© 2022 The Urantia Book Fellowship
by Gard Jameson
(TUB) “Nabon was a Greek Jew and foremost among the leaders of the chief mystery cult in Rome, the Mithraic. While this high priest of Mithraism held many conferences with the Damascus scribe, he was most permanently influenced by their discussion of truth and faith one evening. Nabon had thought to make a convert of Jesus and had even suggested that he return to Palestine as a Mithraic teacher. He little realized that Jesus was preparing him to become one of the early converts to the gospel of the kingdom. Restated in modern phraseology, the substance of Jesus’ teaching was:” [The Urantia Book UB 132:3.1]
“Truth cannot be defined with words, only by living. Truth is always more than knowledge. Knowledge pertains to things observed, but truth transcends such purely material levels in that it consorts with wisdom and embraces such imponderables as human experience, even spiritual and living realities. Knowledge originates in science; wisdom, in true philosophy; truth, in the religious experience of spiritual living. Knowledge deals with facts; wisdom, with relationships; truth, with reality values.” [UB 132:3.2 ]
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(HS) “The question “What is truth?” has been trite since Bacon’s famous use of it, but behind the triteness of it and behind the eternal mystery of it there is a profound fact. Neither Pilate nor Jesus could answer it verbally and categorically, because it is a question which can be answered only in life.” [Creative Personality (CP) 223]
“With this thought of the nature of truth in mind, it becomes evident we shall need to distinguish between truth and knowledge. Truth is the more inclusive term. Knowledge is of things we observe; truth includes the larger world of relations. [CP 224]
“While knowledge is limited to known or discoverable physical phenomena and their relations, truth includes the whole universe of moral relations, values, purpose, efficient causation, and ground.” [CP 225]
“These human values are scientifically indemonstrable. They lie within the region of experience and are not understood nor comprehensible except by those who know them directly in living experience.” [CP 264]
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© This passage holds insight into one of the great perplexities about faith. If God is the greatest of all realities, if God is known by the eternal values of truth, beauty, and goodness, then why is such a reality not more objectively discernible, as a raindrop, or a rock, or even a great mountain! This apparent lack of divine transparency, as well as the realities of evil, led to a tsunami of atheism/agnosticism with the rise of the Early Modern Period, also known ironically as the Enlightenment. Why doesn’t God make him/herself more apparent? Why aren’t He and His angels all around us, embracing us physically? Especially in a world fraught with such horrendous evil?
Faith leads to the subjective realization of divine values, and a growing relationship with Deity. Science on the other hand leads to objective knowledge of things we observe. Science finds its knowledge grounded in facts, while faith finds its realization grounded subjectively in values, by those who know them directly in living experience. It is curious that “the more science you know, the less sure you can be; the more of religion you have, the more certain you are.” [UB 102:1.3 ] Our senses implore us to deny that objective facts are actually less certain than values, more shadowy, spiritual truth more real than the rock of Gibraltar. Quantum physics is beginning to reveal to us the consideration of the spooky and shadowy nature of material reality. Different from Pontius Pilate who asked the question about truth, Jesus responded in silence, as he stood there majestically before the procurator, the sublime incarnate living demonstration of divine values. Had Pilate reached out in faith to Jesus, he would have seen this living truth, the only real proof of spiritual reality; as it was, he was blinded by his own pride, unable to discern the living truth of the illustrious divinity who stood before him.
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(TUB) “Man tends to crystallize science, formulate philosophy, and dogmatize truth because he is mentally lazy in adjusting to the progressive struggles of living, while he is also terribly afraid of the unknown. Natural man is slow to initiate changes in his habits of thinking and in his techniques of living.” [UB 132:3.3]
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(HS) “One demand the human mind insistently makes; it desires rest, content, calm, and this calm it seeks by requiring that all truth and knowledge be within its compass, carefully labeled, and beyond all power of change… We make the demand because of mental laziness and our dread of the unknown.” [CP 226]
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© This section suggests that fear-filled humanity, overall, seems to lack initiative in the spiritual adventure of existence. We tend to be more self-absorbed than absorbed by our spiritual identity as souls. We are told elsewhere in The Urantia Book that one of the chief areas of training in the next life is our proclivity to procrastination, laziness. What we are also told is that as each person communes in faith with the source of all creation, a creative, imaginative, reflective person emerges.
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(TUB) “One of the purposes of the morontia career is to effect the permanent eradication from the mortal survivors of such animal vestigial traits as procrastination, equivocation, insincerity, problem avoidance, unfairness and ease seeking. The mansonia life early teaches the young morontia pupils that postponement is in no sense avoidance. After the life in the flesh, time is no longer available as a technique of dodging situations or of circumventing disagreeable obligations.” [UB 48:5.8 ]
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© Once we acknowledge that dogmatic thinking is a result of laziness and fear, we might begin to cultivate habits of the heart and habits of the mind that would liberate us. We might launch into value projects of blessing the welfare and wellbeing of our families, our communities, our planet. Once the individual begins to partake of the fruits of the spirit, a whole new world of divine potentials and possibilities emerges.
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(TUB) “Revealed truth, personally discovered truth, is the supreme delight of the human soul; it is the joint creation of the material mind and the indwelling spirit. The eternal salvation of this truth-discerning and beauty-loving soul is assured by that hunger and thirst for goodness which leads this mortal to develop a singleness of purpose to do the Father’s will, to find God and to become like him. There is never conflict between true knowledge and truth. There may be conflict between knowledge and human beliefs, beliefs colored with prejudice, distorted by fear, and dominated by the dread of facing new facts of material discovery or spiritual progress.” [UB 132:3.4]
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(HS) “The task of life may well be conceived as a discovery of these values in their varied relations, and their application in everyday affairs. We have no absolute revelations; we must find them as related to ourselves and our duties.” [CP 227]
“Reflection makes increasingly clear that in our world of relations there can be no real conflict between science and religion, or between knowledge and human values. [CP 229]
“Only between knowledge and belief can there be conflict
, and belief is always the sufferer if it places itself in the position of being hostile to facts.” [CP 230]
“Putting one’s self in tune with scientific fact is to put one’s self in tune with nature and to provide the basis of scientific insight and discovery. In the realm of religion it is what is called spiritual single-mindedness; ‘If the eye be single the whole body shall be full of light.’ ” [CP 228]
“Never can be any real conflict between knowledge and truth, although there may be between knowledge and belief. [CP 223]
“Science is delayed by disloyalty to scientific precepts, by the prejudice of acquired and traditional viewpoints, by the coldness of scientific unbelief, by ruling presuppositions and dominant hypotheses. In scientific as well as in theological thought, we witness the refusal to face facts in a new way. [CP 229]
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© Personally-discovered truth is the sublime and supreme delight of the soul, as it emerges from a cocoon of ignorance into the liberating flight of spiritual awareness. As Flewelling points out a number of times, there is a tendency, almost biological, to choose facts over values, science over religion, things over meanings. There is a desire, as Thomas Didymus said, to literally touch, see, and hear the Divine. This is the attitude of the materialist scientist. As Jesus says to Thomas, “just now you must walk by faith and not by sight.” [UB 174:0.2 ] Walking by faith is not a blind journey; it is filled with the certitude and assurances of such faith, the fruits and gifts of the spirit.
As one gains altitude in the ascending and humble flight of the soul, there is a growing delight in the realization that there is cosmic integrity between the realms of matter, mind, and spirit, that there is a glorious harmony of interdependent relation between fact and value, that faith opens the windows of new vistas of truth, while only fear can keep those windows shuttered. Prejudice is ever the handmaiden of fear, while certitude is the crowning glory of divine love!
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(TUB) “But truth can never become man’s possession without the exercise of faith. This is true because man’s thoughts, wisdom, ethics, and ideals will never rise higher than his faith, his sublime hope. And all such true faith is predicated on profound reflection, sincere self-criticism, and uncompromising moral consciousness. Faith is the inspiration of the spiritized creative imagination.” [UB 132:3.5]
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(HS) “Truth becomes a value to us only as it becomes to us a matter of faith, of spiritual insight, and of apprehension wrought out in living terms.” [CP 227]
“The quality of religious faith, the conception of God, and of man’s relation to God will inevitably determine the ethical achievement of the individual. Not that faith can be identified with ethical acts, but the acts will hardly rise higher than the faith.” [CP 238]
“Faith is possible only to a being who possesses the power of self-criticism and reflection. [CP 240]
“Our faith arises out of our power of reflection upon our own acts. Thereby we are able to discover their ethical quality and arrive at a sense of moral responsibility. [CP 240]
“That faith which is to be the guide of the creative imagination and yield the highest success in life must have been placed by habit in the intuitional field.” [CP 242]
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© We are again reminded that spiritual truth is realized only as it is lived. Engage in the exercise of thinking of value people, for example Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and Paul Ehrlich, individuals dedicated to the discovery of spiritual value through their scientific labors. Their scientific quest for truth was fundamentally a spiritual quest that helped them to become living illustrations of supreme value. Truth is not merely an intellectual possession of fact, but the liberating experience of the soul which is eternal. That is the only possible way that truth could be possessed; we carry no bags when we move past this life. All such truth is filtered through the lens of profound reflection, sincere self-criticism, and uncompromising moral consciousness. As faith grows so the power of the creative imagination grows; we become a creative personality (the title of Flewelling’s book), capable of divine insights, wisdom, and compassion. The only cap is the limit of our sincere faith-trust in the realities of the spirit.
And how does faith-trust show up? As a deep emptiness of humility revealed in divine communion; as a holy curiosity that stretches to comprehend the limits of objective fact and the subjective depths of personal spiritual experience; as patience and kindness in the very midst of personal, collective, and ancestral trauma; as our most authentic and genuine self—that is what faith looks like!
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(TUB) “Faith acts to release the superhuman activities of the divine spark, the immortal germ, that lives within the mind of man, and which is the potential of eternal survival. Plants and animals survive in time by the technique of passing on from one generation to another identical particles of themselves. The human soul (personality) of man survives mortal death by identity association with this indwelling spark of divinity, which is immortal, and which functions to perpetuate the human personality upon a continuing and higher level of progressive universe existence. The concealed seed of the human soul is an immortal spirit. The second generation of the soul is the first of a succession of personality manifestations of spiritual and progressing existences, terminating only when this divine entity attains the source of its existence, the personal source of all existence, God, the Universal Father.” [UB 132:3.6]
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(HS) “Thus the perfection of God and the ineffable character of the Eternal Goodness provide a reasonable assumption for the continuance of that order of life which is already taking hold upon eternity. This reason is as profound as the expectation that under normal conditions the pistils, stamens, and ovary sack of the flower will produce the seed and that they in turn will provide the germs of future plants. [CP 249-250]
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© Two reflections emerge here. First and foremost is the recognition that our reality as humans is proportional to our identification with the source of reality, God, by identity association with this indwelling spark of divinity. That identification suggests a reasonable assumption for the continuance of that order of life which is already taking hold upon eternity. Second, the metaphor of the seed is powerful in that it suggests everything is a gift to each individual in potential to become what that individual is intended to become in time and in eternity. The only possible response is profound gratitude toward the source of such reality.
As we identify with God, through deep contemplative communion and selfless service, we become more like God. And, when we say “God” we are identifying God as a person who can love and be loved, and who transcends all notions of identity, including gender. The growing process of identification, becoming more perfect, entails surrendering our will to that of God, and the assumption of divine qualities that will manifest progressively and eternally.
The metaphor of the concealed seed is the recognition of how very small, yet huge, that element of potential divinity is within each of us. Jesus specifically uses the image of the mustard seed as the apparently smallest of seeds, that in time, with proper nourishment, gives rise to a great tree capable of providing shelter and sustenance to many!
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(TUB) “Human life continues— survives—because it has a universe function, the task of finding God. The faith-activated soul of man cannot stop short of the attainment of this goal of destiny; and when it does once achieve this divine goal, it can never end because it has become like God— eternal.” [UB 132:3.7]
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(HS) “There could be no object in prolonging the capacity of evil to reproduce itself. Its only extenuation would lie in the direction of providing a further possibility for the weak and feeble remnants of a spiritual life to grow to normal goodness. How that could be accomplished without displacing the meaning of moral character as voluntary goodness is too deep a question for the human mind.” [CP 250-251]
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© Flewelling’s reflection points to the reality that we are born to fulfill a destiny given to each of us, to grow to normal goodness, whatever that might suggest. That evil exists alongside the good only further suggests that error is an inevitable result in a universe in which moral freedom is granted to the individual.
The fact that such freedom has enabled not only great goodness, but also great historical and present evils upon our planet should not, in any manner, deter the faith-activated soul from their pursuit of the goal of destiny.
Is goodness—the moral expression of divine selflessness—desirable? Then must each of us struggle in an environment of relative goodness, truth, and beauty, “surroundings stimulative of the irrepressible reach for better things.” [UB 3:5.11] That irrepressible reach implies survival after this life, which implies the task of finding God, which implies the process of becoming like God—eternal.
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(TUB) “Spiritual evolution is an experience of the increasing and voluntary choice of goodness attended by an equal and progressive diminution of the possibility of evil. With the attainment of finality of choice for goodness and of completed capacity for truth appreciation, there comes into existence a perfection of beauty and holiness whose righteousness eternally inhibits the possibility of the emergence of even the concept of potential evil. Such a God-knowing soul casts no shadow of doubting evil when functioning on such a high spirit level of divine goodness.” [UB 132:3.8]
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(HS) “We are not then to fall into the mistake, so frequently made, of confusing the possibility of good or evil with the actuality of good or evil. The possibility of evil may well be demanded as necessary to moral choice and the existence of moral character, but the possibility of evil cannot be safely held as implying the necessity or the existence of evil, as is so often assumed. Evil may be possible but not chosen, and so long as it is not chosen it does not exist…The possibility of good and evil in a realm of freedom gives meaning to character. It presents likewise the only known rational ground for ethical achievement.” [CP 237]
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© The reality of good and evil is the anvil upon which many a good soul is crushed, especially when they have been the unwitting victim of evil and injustice. When we observe the injustices of the past two millennia, often in the name of religion, it is no wonder that there is great despair. When the words and spirit of the revelation penetrate to the recesses of the soul, there is a growing realization that the universe is indeed friendly, that the divine forces of the universe are on the side of the morally sensitive individual, that evil is ultimately unreal; so long as it is not chosen it does not exist! That realization is most profound and leads the willing soul on the faith -trust journey of eternal goodness!
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(TUB) “The presence of the Paradise spirit in the mind of man constitutes the revelation promise and the faith pledge of an eternal existence of divine progression for every soul seeking to achieve identity with this immortal and indwelling spirit fragment of the Universal Father.” [UB 132:3.9]
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(HS) “If we hold to the immanence of God and the moral quality of the universe we shall find spiritual life to be a conscious harmonizing and adaptation of the personal will to the divine order. So long as a divine order shall endure then there is reason to assume that such beings as realize life through acting in that order will continue so to function and to grow, until they arrive at the fulness of perfect character. [CP 249]
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© Both passages point to the eternal goal of divine identification. Both passages suggest that the presence of the Paradise spirit in the mind is the ticket to such divine identification. Life is choices, sometimes very difficult choices. In faith, there is certitude of the revelation promise, more certitude than we could ever imagine. That experience of certitude is the rock upon which the eternal career is built, developed, and perfected. With the growing awareness of the Paradise Spirit in the mind comes the blessed assurance of increasing peace, divine joy, and the ability to love unconditionally. What greater treasure could there be? What a sublime promise of things to come for the faith-activated child of God!
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(TUB) “Universe progress is characterized by increasing personality freedom because it is associated with the progressive attainment of higher and higher levels of self-understanding and consequent voluntary self-restraint. The attainment of perfection of spiritual self-restraint equals completeness of universe freedom and personal liberty. Faith fosters and maintains man’s soul in the midst of the confusion of his early orientation in such a vast universe, whereas prayer becomes the great unifier of the various inspirations of the creative imagination and the faith urges of a soul trying to identify itself with the spirit ideals of the indwelling and associated divine presence.” [UB 132:3.10]
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(HS) “Prayer tunes the creative imagination to the most exalted note and may truly be called the sine qua non of all creative work. Prayer has its place in all creative achievement . . . The heart of achievement lies in that type of prayer which unifies all dreams and desires and powers of self-expression in the man, all moral and spiritual aspirations, in the direction of a great and noble aim.” [CP 281]
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© These passages provide the culminating statement to what has come before; it provides the relational technique that connects each person to the divine: prayer. It is reminiscent of Jesus’ inspired remark:“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” [UB 162:7.2 ] To know that truth, faith assumes the reality of Deity, Divinity, and Personality, and acts upon those assumptions by praying to Deity, by communion with Divinity, by loving and being loved as a Personality of Divine Dignity. When such faith actions are engaged, what might have once carried the appearance of self-restraint becomes the experience of completeness of universe freedom and personal liberty!
Is freedom, spiritual freedom, desirable? Then must we commune and communicate with the supernal source of such freedom, God.