© 2009 Jean-Claude Romeuf
© 2009 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
A long time ago, he told me, a renowned journalist, a specialist in phonetic music, had his country’s Télémusicvision admit that it was unthinkable that a word loaded with so much richness could be so ugly. Everyone agreed. The king had to give in to public opinion and proclaimed that from now on, anyone who pronounced the word “Faith” would be immediately thrown in prison and tortured in the event of a repeat offense, because the death penalty had just been abolished. For decades, the word “Faith” was forgotten! What the king and his ministers had not foreseen was that spirituality would gradually deteriorate, because if it was still possible to share some beliefs and some obsolete devotions, Faith without a name could not develop normally in everyone’s heart. A word is always needed to understand a fact or assert a meaning. The God of this country felt isolated because no one conversed with him anymore. He felt useless, he was no longer asked to make it rain when the grass was thirsty, nor to send the sun so that the fruits or vegetables would ripen. Deprived of spirituality, people began to become wicked, they only trusted chance or the malevolence of others. Others being the only ones responsible for their misfortune, vengeance and resentment were rife!
As we all know now on our planet, God is not an angry being, he does not take revenge; he desires the happiness of men. This does not mean that trials are not part of our daily bread without which we would not have normal growth. So, without wanting to severely punish his former worshipers, God still wanted to give them a little lesson so that they would become aware of the error into which they had unwittingly plunged. Since Faith is the only true eternal wealth that men can acquire, he thought, I am going to take away from them all the material wealth that is fleeting but for which men use so much energy. This will perhaps allow them to realize the futility of amassing gold and rubies without worrying about the true values that are spiritual values.
God then spoke to the clouds. He asked them to stop their work: they no longer poured rain and lightning no longer showed the way to heaven. He asked the springs to dry up and the oases turned to sand. Soon men were thirsty, the jars quickly being exhausted; but what was even more serious was that the vines no longer produced fruit and so wine production fell completely. The national anthem was changed; instead, a fashionable song by a mustachioed guitarist was preferred: “Talk to me about the rain, talk to me about the bad weather. The beautiful azure makes me ra-a-ge”. Then, a great philosopher and theologian of the kingdom put forward the hypothesis that to find happiness, it was necessary to make a gigantic offering to God. It was decided to build an immense temple to his glory.
The only material authorized for the foundations, walls and roof would be pure gold. The banks completely emptied their coffers, the piggy banks were broken and the woolen stockings taken out of the cupboards. The dried-up rivers were asked to give up the gold that they had been amassing in their beds for ages and the mines to extract their deposits, which they did willingly. All the gold in the world was soon concentrated in a single point: the temple of God! The purest diamonds were also brought to this point, it was necessary that the openings of the temple have appropriate stained glass windows, as well as all the rubies, emeralds and sapphires. Soon, no one could pay their debts “ruby on the nail”, women mourned their jewels and marriages, for lack of alliance, were dissolved.
When the temple was completed and shining in all its splendor, it was expected that God himself would appear in person to participate in the inauguration. No doubt he would make a laudatory speech in thanks and immediately take possession of his new home. But what should have been feared happened: the temple was swallowed up by an earthquake and all the riches of the world with it. In addition to famine and thirst, the world suffered a new tribulation: poverty.
When spirituality is in danger on a world, there is always a way to regenerate it. In the most remote corner of the planet, a place where only robust and irreducible men can live, a core of individuals, to escape imprisonment and torture, decided to change the word “Faith” to “Wheat”. This is how if one heard: “I have wheat”, it meant “I have faith”. There is always a way to circumvent the law, it was simple, but it had to be thought of. And the big boss, for whom the word is nothing at all, was delighted that there were pilgrims like that! Then the God of the planet started laughing. It seems that God is like women, when you make him laugh, it’s won!
In this corner of land, isolated from all sides, which is called Casanueva, wheat began to grow in an unusual way, there was no need to work hard to cultivate it. A single grain gave you a hundred ears and since there was no rain, there was no longer a season, there were twelve months of July every year. Since July is the month when wheat is cut, I will let you guess the number of harvests that could be made in a single year. The same God who had asked the springs to dry up, secretly called the dew and asked it to wet the grass every morning and to deposit enough rose water in the wells to water men and cattle. The dew, which generally spares no effort, also wetted the vine leaves. Fortunately, there was not only water to drink in Casanueva! In his great goodness, God took the example of certain civil servants who are paid thirteen months a year: there were therefore per year, twelve months of July and one month of September which is the month when the grapes are picked.
The king sent his spies to every nook and cranny of the planet to find out if there was a place spared from God’s scourge. This is how some arrived in Casanueva and reported to the king what they had seen. Some Casanuevois were taken prisoner, but there was no need for torture to make them confess that they had wheat. The king offered to buy some, but he was told that the wheat was not for sale, besides “you have no more gold!” he heard himself say. He asked them what was their secret to having such abundant harvests. It’s simple, they said, we cultivate Faith! It was too much, the forbidden word had just been pronounced in the face of the king who, because of a sudden anger, was seized with a faint and died on the spot.
His replacement lifted the taboo. It seems that on this planet, Wheat is now synonymous with Wealth and Wealth is synonymous with Faith.
Jean-Claude Romeuf