© 2010 Jean-Claude Romeuf
© 2010 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
I have just browsed some Internet forums in which detractors of the Urantia Book, who without worrying about its real message and its content, mainly criticize it for two things:
I noticed that the critiques I read were generally those of people who had skimmed a few pages of the book and who came to rapid conclusions by taking certain passages out of context.
The ideas that I am giving you here are not intended to justify The Urantia Book to severe detractors who will in any case stick to their position, but rather to give confidence and a means of reacting to accusations, to those who, imbued with tolerance, are on the path to a progressive search for the truth.
If we refer to the New Testament or to the Life and Teachings of Jesus in the Urantia Book, we see that the Master, at the end of his public ministry, spoke in parables. This choice allowed the enhancement of new spiritual truths felt by his friends and prevented conflicts related to tradition and the established authority of those who wanted to put him to death. As a result, those who were sensitive to the teaching of Jesus were stimulated in their creative imagination of truths and the enemies of Jesus, those who only sought opportunities to convict him of contempt of the Jewish law were deprived of these new truths. The Master knew that his teaching could be received by all classes of society, by Jews as well as by Gentiles, by the poor and the rich, but that the mental narrowness linked to the lack of tolerance and the relative comfort provided by the tradition of the religion of the time, would prevent these men from listening to and understanding his message.
Today, the detractors of the Urantia Book base themselves on the principle that a truth is teachable and real only if it can be intellectually understood by all. But the Urantia Book, by the hermeticism attributed to it, protects itself from its detractors, exactly as Jesus did with the parables. If one has not become a slave to a religious tradition and if one wishes to follow the winding path of the search for truth, the Urantia Book comes at the right time. When one leafs through the pages of the book for the first time, provided that one is looking for something true, one says to oneself: “Perhaps this is what I am looking for!”; I personally felt a little pang in my heart. It is this first sensation that has made me become since that day, an assiduous reader of the Urantia Book. I have since noticed that the assimilation of certain passages considered difficult to understand was done gradually, without the efforts I made to grasp their meanings seeming painful to me.
To become a reader of the Urantia Book, one must first possess within oneself this “sensitivity to truth.” This is enough to understand Jesus’ message about the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of men among themselves, and the brotherhood of men with the heavenly armies. Then, understanding and endurance in the path one has chosen is a matter of each person’s talents. Human intelligence, although it is considered by men as a divine gift of prime importance, is only one talent among many others in the eyes of God.
It is only a source of values if it puts itself at the service of others. (I therefore refer you to the parable of the talents). I am of the opinion that we must encourage study groups, because it is in study groups that we best benefit from each person’s talents and that we progress in a common search for the truth.
The detractors of the Urantia Book accuse it of racism. Often, they are fervent readers of the Bible. Not wanting to pick a quarrel with anyone, or to nitpick, I would like to ask them to quickly leaf through the Old Testament as they do for the Urantia Book, and they will perhaps realize that the pages are filled with fratricidal and racial wars. In this marvelous book full of great spiritual values that is the Old Testament, the Hebrews are considered the chosen people of God and the gentiles only obtain salvation if they are adopted by the Jews. I have nothing against that, I cannot be racist, because Jesus himself was Jewish.
The Urantia Book is criticized for the five hundred thousand year old colored race issue. It is criticized for describing the superiority of certain races of that time over others. These races are all now mixed with Adamic blood and form the races of modern man whose individuals are equal in spiritual potential. According to the laws of evolution, it was normal, in the age of the primitive races, for the strongest individuals with Adjuster and personality to supplant the weaker and less intelligent individuals who were closer to animals than to men, but with whom they had the ability to reproduce. Men today are all descended from the higher primates; there must have been a selection! The vision of The Urantia Book is broadened when it tells us that the goal of racial destiny will be the attainment of a single universal race speaking the same language. This racial mixing began with the coming together of the world’s populations and will continue in the future without any current race needing to impose its supremacy over the others. If a current race wanted to impose its supremacy over another, it would be in disagreement with the teachings of The Urantia Book. In the same way, when an individual believes himself superior to another, because of obvious and multiple talents, he is in disagreement with The Urantia Book.
To talk about eugenics, a word that we hardly dare to pronounce in our time, I would simply like to relate an article that appeared in Midi Libre. A photo showed a family composed of a man, his wife and their daughter. The man was suffering from a genetic disease. The technicians had eliminated the gametes responsible for the chromosomal disease and had artificially fertilized the wife. A splendid little girl, full of health, was smiling in the photo. So I ask two questions. Isn’t that what eugenics is? Was it more moral for the parents to submit to chance (one chance in two) rather than do everything they could to overcome the inconveniences of nature?
Jean-Claude Romeuf