© 2000 Ken Glasziou
© 2000 The Brotherhood of Man Library
How free is our free will? How far does it extend. Limits must be there. At one extreme, we are not free to do the undoable deed. A close examination of what we are given in the Urantia Papers tells us more about what we can do than what we cannot do.
Primarily, we are free to make our own personal choice regarding our eternal destiny. And no force, creator, or agency in the whole of the universes is permitted to interfere with that choice. In this regard, the Universal Father has decreed the absolute sovereignty of the mortal free will. (UB 5:6.8)
Furthermore, any form of coercion in our making of that choice is positively excluded. The gate to eternity opens “only in response to the freewill choice of the freewill sons of the God of free will.” (UB 5:6.12)
If we wish to understand some of the peculiarities of the Urantia Papers, and particularly so if we are inclined to have a fundamentalist attitude towards them, we may need to spend considerable time and effort in analyzing what we consider would constitute coercion or interference with “the freewill choice of a freewill son of the God of free will.”
The Urantia Papers inform us that we are free to choose eternal life but there is a condition. If we do so, we must commit ourselves to seeking to do things in God’s way under all circumstances. If we reject God’s will as also being our will, then when and if our decision is final, we sentence ourselves to oblivion. So how much free will do we really have?
Surely these terms are no different, in principle, from what a horse trainer does. When he wants a horse to obey a command, he endeavors to place it in a situation in which obedience brings peace and quiet and disobedience brings the opposite. The law or rules of human societies operate on the same principle—reward for compliance, punishment of some kind for disobedience. In respect to eternal life, our choice is to accept or reject God’s will for us.
The Urantia Papers inform us that entry into God’s “kingdom” is by faith and faith alone. They also inform us that God both exists and is “good.” It follows that the eternal life promised by a good God must also be good—so good in fact that to miss out would be deprivation of good, hence “bad.” But our acceptance of these claims must be by faith alone, not through proof.
How real could our compulsory “by faith” decision be if the Urantia Papers provided positive proof for both the existence and goodness of God?
In analyzing our situation, it may appear to us that having always to choose the will of God is actually a sacrifice, a foregoing of our free will. This really means our preference is to indulge the apparent delights of selfish behavior than to forego them by choosing God’s way—which is to serve our associates rather than to exploit them.
This preference derives directly from inherited evolutionary animal behavior patterns. Mostly such behavior is associated with sex or hunger—the relief of tension derived from completion of sexual intercourse, and the relief from anxiety resulting from the “ownership” of a personal territory providing a haven of security and freedom from hunger. Nature has coupled these behavior patterns in such a way that, in the long run, they serve to perpetuate the species.
At base, animal behavior is self-serving. It is so because related behavior patterns do the necessary job of ensuring species survival. There is no other purpose. And, in fact, there is no “Nature” supervising the operation. It exists because it works.
Human behavior is a modified form of animal behavior brought about by imprinting upon animal behavior patterns, a sense of morality and duty, a striving for meaning, the differentiating of fact from non-fact, right from wrong, plus a desire to worship, all these derived from cosmic mind. Personality also stamps specific attributes upon us that tend to modify behavior, among them self-consciousness, competence in decision making, and the activation of attributes associated with cosmic mind. On top of all that comes the influence of our personal indwelling spirit of God.
We humans have all the necessary attributes to make freewill decisions. But the powers that be have decreed that for one special decision we must not be coerced. That special decision is to forever choose God’s will in preference to our own. This same decision is also described as entry into the kingdom, the “choosing of eternal life,” “salvation,” etc. And it must be by faith and faith alone. This is stated in numerous forms:
“Salvation. . . is to be had only by believing, by simple and sincere faith” (UB 140:10.1); “The attainment of salvation is by faith and faith alone” (UB 141:7.6); “Faith, simple childlike faith is the key to the door of the kingdom” (UB 170:3.2); “Faith alone will pass you through its portals.” (UB 140:1.4); “the individual becomes God-knowing only by faith.” (UB 102:6.5).
It logically follows that the authors of the Urantia Papers had no choice other than to avoid providing positive proof of the authority of their revelation. We had to have good reason to doubt anything and everything in the Papers.
It appears that the universe rules for revelation to ascendant mortal human beings of any planet demand that room must be left for doubt.
On reflection though, it seems nice that we do have room to doubt—hence room to make a true freewill decision about ourselves, for ourselves. The inhabitants of Havona envy us. On what grounds could they envy us mortals other than for the fact that we do have real free will? Sure, we do have to give it back, but at least we had the offer of a choice. It has been said many times during many hundreds of years that a God who loves us could not do otherwise. On reflection, that also appears to be a mighty truth.
We have another problem to face. Our primary choice is our decision to seek in all ways to do the will of God. But what is the will of God?
For us backward, back woods Urantia mortals, the safest and best way to answer such difficult questions is always to first see how Jesus answered or what Jesus did. This one seems appropriate:
Jesus said: “The will of God is the way of God, partnership with the choice of God in the face of any potential alternative. To do the will of God, therefore, is the progressive experience of becoming more and more like God, and God is the source and destiny of all that is good and beautiful and true.” (UB 130:2.7)
Here is another that is extremely helpful:
“The human Jesus saw God as being holy, just, and great, as well as being true, beautiful, and good. All these attributes of divinity he focused in his mind as the ‘will of the Father in heaven.’” (UB 196:0.2)
Just as with spiritual or divine values to which no precise definition can be given, so with the “will of God.” Its definition is “circumstantial”—dependent on circumstances, some of which may be extremely complex.
All of the terms, holy, just, great, true, beautiful, and good are indefinable and often relative. We are told that we can know God more by the life of Jesus than by his teachings. Again though, incidents in his life are not likely to be independent of the circumstances in which they happen. We have to get a “feel” for how Jesus would react in particular circumstances.
One good guide for how we should love our neighbor is given by the statement:
“Love, unselfishness, must undergo a constant and living re-adaptive interpretation of relationships in accordance with the leading of the Spirit of Truth. Love must thereby grasp the ever-changing and enlarging concepts of the highest cosmic good of the individual who is loved.” (UB 180:5.10)
The term “highest cosmic good” means that in seeking to be helpful or to love another, it is not necessarily their immediate benefit that we should be concerned with. Rather we should be asking the Spirit of Truth to aid us in knowing and doing what might help them in some way to further their eternal career—or at least not to jeopardize it.
Besides the lead we get from “highest cosmic good” in serving our brothers and sisters, Jesus’ words, “The will of God is the way of God” are always helpful, especially when combined with the question, “What would Jesus do in like circumstances?”
Florence Nightingale di inspire awe, not because one felt afraid of her per se, but because the very essence of Truth seemed to emanate from her, and because of her perfect fearlessness in telling it.
William Richmond