© 1986 Madeline Noordzy
© 1986 ANZURA, Australia & New Zealand Urantia Association
It has been suggested that Australia is the Western World’s most secular nation. I leave it to you, to decide whether this is true or false. But another survey done a few years ago, came up with the conclusion that Australians are the happiest people in the world. Again is this true or false? We could start drawing all sorts of conclusions from these statements, if we took them seriously.
If we compare ourselves with countries like India, Iran, Pakistan and a few other ones, where religion plays such an important part in the lives of people, we could say that we are better off without it. It is perhaps true that we do not want to go back to the stage where the religions of fear held people in their grip.
Are we going through that interim period, where we have let go of the evolutionary religion of fear, but still haven’t grasped the revelatory religion of love?
You only have to look and listen to our daily news, that dishes up our social ailments to the point of saturation, to know that this is indeed the case.
But remember: “As you view the world, remember that the black patches of evil which you see are shown against a white background of ultimate good. You do not view merely white patches of good which show up miserably against a black background of evil”. (UB 195:5.12)
To keep our sanity, we have to keep reminding ourselves of that. It is easy enough to join the queue of “knockers” and point out all the wrongs of our society.
“A lasting social system without a morality predicated on spiritual realities can no more be maintained than could the solar system without gravity.” (UB 195:5.9)
What are these spiritual realities that the Urantia Book talks about? The way I see it — and here pardon me for my limited human viewpoint — is that God is our Father, and that means my Father and your Father and the guy next door’s Father. And if we all have one Father, then we must be brothers and sisters.
But what is this: Father of ours really like? The Urantia Book tells us that if we want to know the Father, we should look at His Son. The Son came to portray the loving nature of His Father. And when we study the life of this Son, we discover it was a life of loving service.
Is that what we haven’t understood yet? That no civilization can for very long survive if it does not augment the profit motive with the service motive?
When we look at the word“service”, the dictionary defines it as: “an act of help or assistance”. And the origin of the word is the Latin word “servitium”, condition of a slave.
And here is the crux of the matter. I have underlined “loving”, when I was talking about Jesus’ life of service. Take out the love element and it lowers us to the level of slaves.
If love is the coherent force that holds the universes together, then love lifts us up from slaves to children of the Father. It puts wings on our feet and lightens our load, no matter how menial the task.
“Service — purposeful service, not slavery — is productive of the highest satisfaction and is expressive of the divinest dignity. Service — more service, increased service, adventurous service, and at last divine and perfect service — is the goal of time and the: destination of space. But ever will the play cycles of time alternate with the service cycles of progress. And after the service of time there follows the superservice of eternity. During the play of time you should envision the work of eternity, even as you will, during the service of eternity, reminisce the play of time.” (UB 28:6.17)
“Have you got any suggestions as to how we can serve?”, asked a friend of mine after she read this article up to this point. I paused for a moment before I answered: “Let’s start at home,” I said. “We can’t all be like Mother Theresa and look after the starving children in India. Our society is built up of units of families. Happy families produce a happy nation.”
The following line from the Master’s teachings comes to my mind: “… and it is the divine will that men and women should find their highest service and consequent joy in the establishment of homes for the reception and training of children; in the creation of whom the se parents become copartners with the Makers of heaven and earth. And for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall become as one.” (UB 167:5.7)
We all know that it is one of the most difficult “professions” to be a father or mother, but one for which we receive very little training. And to make us understand the importance of parenthood, on UB 47:1.6 we are reminded that: “No ascending mortal can escape the experience of rearing children — their own or others — either on the material worlds or subsequently on the finaliter world or on Jerusem.” (UB 47:1.6)
And the following sentence was written for all the Dads of this world. “Fathers must pass through this essential experience just as certainly as mothers. It is an unfortunate and mistaken notion of modern peoples on Urantia that child culture is largely the task of mothers. Children need fathers as well as mothers, and fathers need this parental experience as much as do mothers.” (UB 47:1.6)
It is a service for which we won’t get our name on the Queen’s New Year’s honours list.
But if we are totally concerned about our inward and spiritual fellowship with our heavenly Father, if we want to do His will wholeheartedly, then loving service will be an unconscious manifestation of this inner experience, which the Master called the Kingdom of Heaven.
I’m sure that you have plenty more suggestions for loving service in the Father’s Kingdom.
Madeline Noordzy, Melbourne