© 2018 Geoff Taylor
© 2018 The Urantia Book Fellowship
by Geoff Taylor
As a reader, I like to elevate any conversation to include spiritual concepts from The Urantia Book. This works particularly well with the Baha’i group in Winnipeg so when I chose to lead the Interfaith Committee of the Fellowship, I thought it was really just a similar outreach. A subset of the “outreach function of the Fellowship,” as applied to other faiths. There was even an article on the Fellowship web site that suggested I was on the right path. It suggested that Interfaith was giving “visibility” of the Urantia Book to other faiths. Dana, our new president, gave me an expanded perspective. He suggested that outreach is about making the book visible and that Interfaith is about making the fruits of the spirit visible. I now see why normal outreach is wrong for Interfaith. Interfaith should not be about making the Urantia Book visible; it should be about demonstrating what we have learned by reading the book. This may result in one reading The Urantia Book but most religionists have their own text for guidance. Our sharing of the fruits of the spirit not only demonstrate the wisdom of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, they may also bring attention to the source of that wisdom, if the religionist is also a seeker.
I am particularly appreciative of the people who fund these activities and perforce those people who donate to make these things possible.
I have the sense that The Urantia Book is finally coming out of the closet. There are people in the scholastic world who are now daring to quote the book as an authoritative source or at least as an interesting perspective. No longer are we trapped by the “Who wrote it?” question. We are proud of the content, proud to support those that are advancing the concepts. We are all happy to share its lessons and the best way to share these lessons with fellow religionists is to serve them more than they expect. If we live the teachings, we obviously love the book. If we love the book and they love the service, maybe they will ask what inspires our service. The most important thing is the fruit bearing. The rest is gravy, or at least apple sauce.
I used to feel that our challenge with other faiths was to search for and amplify the common ground. I truly felt that if we could get all religions to agree that there was only one creator that we would be on the road to world peace. One creator, one family, or as I like to put it: one creator, one cosmos, one clan. I even wrote a letter to Pope Francis to that effect and although this may still be true, I am now thinking that diversity of religious thinking is OK, so long as we all give the over arching sovereignty to that one creator. No religion has it right. All religionists need to serve and this service will unite us all in love, and God is love. Another common denominator is worship. If other religionists see our desire to serve and to worship our common God of love, as we are serving his creation, they may feel a stronger kinship to unite.
One language (the language of love), one religion (service). Serving up world peace.
¶ Donation to Interfaith
Please donate to the Urantia Book Fellowship to support programs by the Interfaith Committee and other outreach work at: https://urantiabook.worldsecuresystems.com/donation
The Urantia Book Fellowship
PO Box 6631
Broomfield, CO 80021