© 1996 Ken Glasziou
© 1996 The Brotherhood of Man Library
| Jesus would not appeal to the Moral Majority | Volume 3 - No. 6 — Index | The Science and Historical Content of The Urantia Book |
“Morality can never be advanced by law or by force. It is a personal and freewill matter and must be disseminated by the contagion of the contact of morally fragrant persons with those who are less morally responsive, but who are also in some measure desirous of doing the Father’s will.” (UB 16:7.9)
Essentially, the book is telling us that if Urantia society is to advance spiritually, our morality cannot be static, moribund. It must go forward. However we cannot legislate or utilize punitive methods to enforce moral advance. A society makes such advances if, and only if, it has morally fragrant members whose morality is contagious—and at least some other members who are morally responsive.
The choice of the word “fragrant” by the revelators is interesting. In writing this, I initially used the word “superior.” But don’t we all know those of “superior” morality who are nevertheless repugnant to others because of their “better than thou” attitude. If morality is to be disseminated by contact with “morally fragrant persons” then those persons have to be living examples of that higher morality. It is unproductive, and often counter-productive, to be a person who says “do as I do” (plus the implication of punishment for failure) or the more usual form, “do as I say, not as I do” (plus the implied punishment for failure). This is particularly true in “normal” human society where the “do as I do” and the “do as I say” types of persons say one thing in public and do another in private. In New Testament times it was the scribes, the lawyers, and the Pharisees who had the reputation of fulfilling this role. In modern times, it is the politicians and the lawyers who collect the publicity. But let’s not forget parents, teachers, religionists, etc., for times have not changed much.
So how can Urantia Book readers be morally fragrant. Well, one example we have is Jesus. Are there others? In a recent T.V. interview, a winner of a swimming gold medal at the Atlanta Olympics was questioned intensively about his life-style, his other interests both in sport and elsewhere, and his intentions for his future swimming and after-swimming career. Out of the blue and quite out of context, he came out with the statement that friends and family were the most important thing in life. His remark was not further qualified and the T.V. host passed it by. However, I’m sure that in the eyes of many viewers, that particular sporting celebrity left behind him some true moral fragrance.
I think moral fragrance has to be unconscious. If we are conscious of our moral standards and in any way attempt to exhibit them to others, the fragrance will certainly diminish and probably die away. We have to “be” before we can “do.”
“That evening, while teaching in the house, for it had begun to rain, Jesus talked at great length, trying to show the twelve what they must “be,” not what they must “do.” They knew only a religion that imposed the “doing” of certain things as the means of attaining righteousness—salvation. But Jesus would reiterate, “In the kingdom you must be righteous in order to do the work. . . but it was a difficult task to persuade these Galilean fishermen that, in the kingdom, being righteous, by faith, must precede doing righteousness in the daily life of the mortals of the earth.” (UB 140:10.1)
Righteousness certainly includes morality, hence if the Fifth Epochal Revelation is to do its work, then we readers have to “be” both righteous and moral if we are to become morally fragrant and infectious.
It must be extremely difficult for an irreligious person to subscribe to a moral code that glorifies unselfishness as a supreme virtue. Religious people who are at the same time, moral, tend to believe in a God who is love personified and who extends the offer of that love to all mankind. It seems that any deviation from a belief system encompassing such a God inevitably opens the door for grossly immoral behavior.
Without a God who is love, and the promise of some desirable afterlife, the embracing of Paul’s alternative philosophy becomes almost compulsory: “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.” (1 Cor. 15:32) And with its acceptance, comes a deterioration of morality with the tendency to the maximizing of selfishness, for without a divine authority, the basis for any morality becomes arguable and self-interest becomes the paramount motivation.
“When man fails to discriminate the ends of his mortal striving, he finds himself functioning on the animal level of existence.” (UB 16:7.5)
Could it be that a major intention of the revelators in providing us with the Fifth Epochal Revelation is the hope that adherents should become those morally fragrant persons who, by their personal example, will become the goal setters for a new moral order in society?
Each man sees what he carries in his heart.
Goethe
| Jesus would not appeal to the Moral Majority | Volume 3 - No. 6 — Index | The Science and Historical Content of The Urantia Book |