© 1990 Mary Daly
© 1990 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
by Mary Daly
Let’s begin by asking the Holy Spirit to make us triumphant over the sophistry of presumption.
Lord, we ask you to reveal your presence in a deeper way here. We’re to talk over some matters of spiritual growth; help us to put aside any other concerns and be open to you. If there’s an experience of your touch that we need to understand better or a question that needs to be answered, give us a quiet and gentle spirit to hear your word in wisdom. I do truly praise you that you continue to call each one of us so faithfully.
I’d like to begin with a delightful story from a nun named Sister Briege McKenna. Briege entered the convent at age fifteen and was a first grade teacher with crippling arthritis in her early twenties. After seeing many doctors both in Ireland and in America, she expected to be in a wheelchair within months and all the doctors hoped for was to be able to control the pain. One day, in one split second, as she was seeking a deeper relationship with Jesus, she was completely healed. Some months later when Jesus was calling her to a deeper work of faith, she had this little vision of her life. In this image, Jesus came to visit her, and knocked on the door of her house. She opened and was delighted to welcome him in and invite him to make himself at home. So he did, and he went from room to room until he came to a room marked with a big sign:
Private Property.
Do Not Enter.
“But Briege, why can I not go in here,” he asked. And in her dream she answered, “Ah, come on now, Jesus, — Look it, I give you a lot. I mean, you can’t expect everything.” “Briege,” he answered, “if I don’t get into that room, you’ll never know freedom, you’ll never experience the joy of the gospel, and you will never be fully able to be what I want you to be.”
This afternoon, I’m to talk about walking more closely with God by refusing to presume on his divine mercy. This story puts it all in context, because if you want to understand presumption you need to understand consecration, and that’s what Sister Briege’s story is really about — a call to generous consecration rather than presumptuous bargaining as a relationship with God. We’ll begin by reflecting on God’s mercy and what presumption is, and on the reality of declined salvation. Next we’ll talk about what sin is, because there’s a great denial of sin, and I think that’s our commonest form of presumption. Then we’ll ask how to overcome presumption, because just thinking it’s bad won’t stop it.
First of all, we might ask ourselves: “How extensive is God’s mercy?”
And, in answer, we can look at the passage on UB 28:6.5 on “The Memory of Mercy.” These are living records of the mercy extended to each one of us in the ministry of the Infinite Spirit. It says, “In revealing the Father’s pre-existent mercy, the Sons of God establish the necessary credit to insure the survival of all…A mercy credit is established for the survival of each rational creature, a credit of lavish proportions and one of sufficient grace to insure the survival of every soul who really desires divine citizenship.” Nevertheless (looking at the next page), “when mercy is exhausted, when the ‘memory’ thereof testifies to its depletion, then does justice prevail and righteousness decree. For mercy is not to be thrust upon those who despise it…”
So there is plenty of mercy, but it is not absolute; it does not determine our survival.
Again, we can look at UB 159:3.3, where Jesus says: “Forget not that I will stop at nothing to restore self-respect to those who have lost it, and who really desire to regain it.” Our Creator Son will “stop at nothing” — and the crucifixion shows that he really meant it. What an immense, humble mercy!
So, then, mercy is abundant, but it can still be refused, because it is qualified by that phrase, “and who really desire to regain it.”
What then, is presumption? If mercy is so great, how could anybody count on it “too much?”
Very simply, you might say that presumption is expecting — just taking it for granted — that the mercy extended for past sins will apply to our present and future sins as we plan them. That’s really terrible…to plan sins? But there is a way people have of refusing to consider the spiritual consequences of their actions because, after all, God is merciful — why worry? What the Urantia revelation makes so clear is that there are consequences to our choices. If we do something wrong, that wrong will harm us; and if we have a careless attitude about the possibility of doing wrong, that will also harm us. We who trust in God’s mercy must not be like a person who plans “deathbed repentance” only to discover on his deathbed that he’s not really sorry. Unexpectedly, it has become “too late.” This is not God’s doing; we harden our hearts when we seek to attain God by spurious trust rather than personal dedication.
Presumption is trust gone awry — trust as an excuse for sin, instead of a salvation from sin.
Jesus teaches this truth (UB 146:2.2) when he says, “The conscious and persistent regard for iniquity in the heart of man gradually destroys the prayer connection of the human soul with the spirit circuits of communication between man and his Maker… When the human heart deliberately and persistently harbors the concepts of iniquity, there gradually ensues the loss of personal communion between the earth child and his heavenly Father.” Notice that Jesus refers to the mere “regard for iniquity” — not to actually doing anything. (How would this square with watching television for hours on end?) This attention destroys our capacity for prayer, and spiritual choices become less and less available for actual doing. So when you’re aware that something is wrong, just don’t mess with it; check out! If you’re not sure, ask, and if you don’t get an answer, try leaving it alone. Sometimes we don’t get a clear answer because we aren’t ready to take “no” for an answer. Be ready!
What we’re really talking about here is sometimes called the destruction of conscience. G.K. Chesterton has a little story about it in his book Tremendous Trifles, where he tells about overhearing a locker-room conversation and the last words he hears are something like, “But if I do that, I will no longer know the difference between good and evil.” He flees. He knows he is hearing a person talk about spiritual suicide, about finally breaking the connection with God, the connection that’s clear and truthful. And people do break this connection and know when they are breaking it.
I have the impression that for many people the back door through which presumption enters their spirituality is the belief that everyone is really saved. I just don’t think the Urantia revelation, cheerful as it is, supports such a belief. Let me give some examples.
The simplest thing to consider is the numbers given for those who fell during the rebellion. Some of these are listed on UB 53:7.6 a considerable number of the superior seraphim, a few of the supervisor order, over one third of the administrator seraphim, one third of all the Jerusem cherubim, about one third of the planetary angelic helpers, almost ten percent of the transition ministers, over 600,000 Material Sons, and nearly four fifths of the midwayers. And, as for mortals (that’s us!), many on the lower mansion worlds
But there is an even stranger number on the following page where the number of Jerusem citizens at the time of the rebellion is given: 187,432,811. That’s an awfully small number of citizens, isn’t it? Perhaps I have misunderstood, but if Jerusem citizenship is something we all pass through, and there were only 187 million such citizens from over 600 inhabited worlds, the survival rate was averaging a third of a million per world, and this is the prerebellion survival rate, those who were Jerusem citizens at the time. If we imagine an average world population of 100 million, still far behind our own population even in pre-industrial times, that’s only one in three hundred for the system average! We are looking at a very small number here. I hope someone can explain to me how I have misunderstood it.
By comparison, the fact that only a third of the Sanhedrin rejected Jesus — while one third stood by and the others openly embraced the gospel when it came time to count noses — seems not bad. Remember, however, that the Jewish people were among the most spiritually advanced peoples of the world. And it wasn’t just the arrogant leadership that rejected Jesus two to one; Nazareth had the same kinds of numbers when Jesus first spoke there: one third happy to hear him, one third confused, one third rejecting. And then we have the account of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes and the subsequent sermon on the bread of life. All of a sudden, a fellowship of 50,000 dwindled to 500. (UB 152:6.2) One in a hundred survived that time of testing. (!)
Of course, Lucifer himself is an example of the possibility of rejecting eternal life.
And so is Judas. I know that many readers of The Urantia Book doubt that Judas lost eternal life. After all, didn’t he say (UB 186:1.4) as he threw down his coins, “I repent that I have done this; here is your money. I want to escape the guilt of this deed.” If he repented, would he not be forgiven? Who can say what last thought might have passed through his soul too late to save his body from the desperate decision to hang himself?
But though it’s true he would have been forgiven if he spiritually repented, Jesus spoke some very strong words about the possibility of nonspiritual repentance: “Salvation is not open to those who are unwilling to pay the price of wholehearted dedication to doing my Father’s will. When in spirit and soul you have turned your backs upon the Father’s kingdom, it is useless in mind and body to stand before this door and knock…” (UB 166:3.4, emphasis added) In his mind, Judas understood that he should have embraced the kingdom, but was there love in his spirit? Did he not choose to “escape” the experience of guilt by death rather than repentance? This is not an abiding escape. And since Judas died before the resurrection, he belongs to the last dispensation, and if he is to rise, he must already have done so. In that case, The Urantia Book’s reflections on his fall would be balanced by some mention of his merciful rehabilitation. Or so it seems to me.
So, to sum it up, although mercy is guaranteed to be sufficient, free will is not thereby transgressed, and some — perhaps many — choose not to go on with the challenges of unending spiritual life.
We’ve looked at the evidence that some people don’t choose salvation. Now, from a slightly different angle, I want to explore one of the ways we’ve nevertheless persuaded ourselves that there can really be no sin.
Basically, the great argument is a variation on the legal plea of insanity, It goes like this: You’d have to be crazy to sin, but if you are crazy, you can’t be responsible, so whatever you do, it’s not a sin.
To put it another way, sin is deliberate disloyalty to Deity, but who could know God, loveable as he is, and fail to choose him? If you perceive him as loveable, you choose him; if you fail to see him as loveable, you haven’t really seen him and so are incapable of disloyalty.
But such arguments cannot be compelling; they are circular. Their institutionalization in the law of the land has led to chaos; their acceptance within family life is disastrous to discipline; they certainly have no place in a divine plan that is orderly and that genuinely includes free will.
Most startlingly, I think the Urantia revelation teaches that insanity can result from sin. The insanity plea won’t hold because, yes, you’d have to be a nut to be so bad, but you can make yourself nutty by being bad. On UB 67:1.4 we read about this process: “Sin is a purposeful resistance to divine reality, a conscious choosing to oppose spiritual progress—while iniquity consists in an open and persistent defiance of recognized reality and signifies such a degree of personality disintegration as to border on cosmic insanity.” So if someone is insane, it may not mean he can’t sin; it may just mean he has sinned! Not that we should seek to judge which way things lie; that’s for God. But we may not presume on the insanity plea.
Another place to read about this process of making yourself nutty by iniquity is in Scott Peck’s interesting little book, The People of the Lie. This is actually a psychiatric description of the iniquitous personality. It’s quite fascinating to see a psychiatrist openly stating that there is a personality disorder whose victims are incredibly dishonest, actually nauseating to be with, and responsive only to raw power, a disorder which cannot be reduced to any known category of sickness, for which he knows no cure, and which he has never seen cured.
And if there can really be sin, there needs to be repentance, surely. In my own thinking about this, I have recently begun to make a distinction that has helped me to clarify a confusion about repentance. Let me explain:
On UB 143:2.3 John the Baptist and Jesus are distinguished in their gospel presentation in simple terms: John taught his followers to repent and believe while Jesus taught his to believe and rejoice. So there is a tendency to think Jesus wasn’t into repentance-it’s not really part of his gospel. Yet he did assert (UB 156:2.7) that “if you confess your sins they are forgiven” and this “if” is confirmed at the end of the paper on sin (#89, “Sin, Sacrifice, and Atonement”) when it asserts that confession (leading to the sincere recognition of the nature of sin) is “essential to religious growth and spiritual progress.”
I’m inclined to resolve the apparent contradiction between these two passages — one implying that repentance is not a big issue and one calling it essential — by making a distinction of my own between two kinds of sins which I call “monkey sins” and sins of spiritual rebellion. Actually, I’m not sure this is too different from the distinction between evil and sin as given in the book, but it helped me, anyway, so I share it.
Monkey sins are things like vanity, aggression, selfishness, territorialism — the stuff you see in the jungle. They are “evil” but not always sinful, and at the level of evolutionary evil, they can be “outgrown” by the simple increase in true spirituality. Once we have committed ourselves to the kingdom, Jesus does not ask for the kind of ongoing “repentance” which is really a perpetual guilt trip — debilitating to the soul, and especially hurtful to souls who tend to be fearful and self-rejecting, anyway. Monkey sins may become fully sinful or become the foundation of deeper sins, but the fact that we have a lot of evolutionary growing to do is not of itself sinful. The issue here is really growth more than repentance.
Sins of spiritual rebellion are deeper. They include pride (a spiritual expansion of vanity), anger (cherished and self-righteous aggressiveness), self-centeredness (deeper and more of a barrier to worship than selfishness), and lack of accountability (a step beyond territorialism — a refusal to recognize the rightful claims of relationships with others). These are some of the sins of the rebellion — and they cannot be outgrown. They have to be rejected. They have to be confessed in a way that clarifies their intent and direction and spiritual magritude, and they have to be explicitly rejected. They have to be repented.
I think that if we recognize these two dimensions of sins, we can see why there are passages in the Urantia revelation which seem to imply that repentance is not an issue, only growth; while there are other passages indicating that repentance and confession are quite important.
What is sin, then?
I guess at this point we’re about overdue to ask exactly what sin is. Presumption means disregarding the possibility of sin or the likely consequences of sin. But what is sin ? The Urantia revelation is so cheerful and friendly — it does not dwell much on this topic — but neither is it silent.
We have a definition on UB 89:10.2. “Sin must be redefined as deliberate disloyalty to Deity.” We have already considered how there can be such disloyalty.
Then we have Jesus’ teaching on UB 148:4.2. This gives some very interesting insights:
About evil: “Evil is likewise the measure of the imperfectness of obedience to the Father’s will.”
About sin: “Sin is the measure of unwillingness to be divinely led and spiritually directed.” (This is what Briege was talking about, isn’t it? Sure, I love God, but am I going to let him run my life?)
About iniquity: “Iniquity is the measure of the continued rejection of the Father’s loving plan…”
Jesus’ words are wonderful because they are so simple and yet they certainly put evil and sin into the realm of attitudes we know we entertain.
I think we can recognize in Jesus’ teaching that while the emphasis is different and more interior, the list of possible sins includes most of the old-fashioned lists and more, not less. It’s not burdensome because it isn’t spiritually trivial, and so we have the help of celestial and even divine spirits in our efforts to overcome sin. But the challenge is enormous, and the better we know God, the more “little things” shift from the category of trivial evolutionary evil to the category of “disloyalty to Deity” and “unwillingness to be led.” Because, you see, at first we live outside our Father’s will because we’re ignorant of him, but as we come to know him, the same activities constitute a resistance to his will.
So, then, if rejected survival and sin are realities, we know we shouldn’t be presumptuous, but how-in practical terms — can we overcome this lazy spiritual attitude? I see two major ways to overcome presumption:
The first is confessional experiences. I’m sure many of you have had the experience of coming into new freedom in your relationship with God and others by overcoming your denial of guilt-perhaps through an encouraging personal relationship that opened your heart, perhaps through a sacramental experience, perhaps through a “fifth step” experience in a program such as Alcoholics Anonymous.
Second, of course, the deeper overcoming of presumption, the sweeping experience, is personal consecration. Consecration is the choice to be unqualifiedly with God as an intimate companion. And that is the choice Sister Briege made. Just a short time later, she began giving retreats to — if you can imagine this for a little Irish nun in her twenties — priests! And for twelve or fifteen years now, she’s traveled all over the world to encourage faith in the presence of Jesus, not so much in physical healing (though a lot of that happens) but in the inner healing of becoming able to say “yes” to God. She’s spoken to both government leaders and to the desperately poor in many countries, as well as to priests (and even sometimes to ordinary people, so I heard her myself). She has such a beautiful word of encouragement. So God is just amazing — but we must be wholehearted to experience it.
And we all have these doors marked “private property” in our relationship with the Lord. But we really can’t, you know. We can’t be telling him that there are certain areas of our lives that we don’t want to share with him. The Urantia Book says, in a section on “The Consecration of Choice” (UB 111:5.1): “The doing of the will of God is nothing more or less than an exhibition of creature willingness to share the inner life with God.”
So we can’t tell God we don’t want to talk to him about our business practices or about our sex life or about anything-at-all-before-our-morning-coffee or during our TM, or whatever. All times and all places and all topics must be consecrated to finding him and letting him find us in love.
Before closing, I’d like to take just a few minutes to share part of my own story and how I learned about confession.
You know, I grew up in the Catholic Church in a family that was intellectually and spiritually quite above the average. My father is a respected scientist, a very deep and humble thinker, and my mother, now that she’s raised the nine of us, is busy writing books about the spirituality of our great American poet, Emily Dickinson.
So when I was away from the Church, it was very hard to feel myself rejected by such good spiritual company, but the Urantia revelation seemed an impossible barrier to Church membership. At last, I went to my local bishop (in Sioux Falls) and I told him my story. But I didn’t only tell him about The Urantia Book, because as I prepared to see him, I understood through prayer that I needed to open my heart to him on a different level. I needed to tell him things about my life that were painful to bring up, sad things hidden deep in my heart. In response he sent me, not to a theologian, but to the holiest priest in the diocese for some spiritual guidance. What a wonderful gift! I can never stop being grateful.
I remember one time as I was preparing to see this priest, I was troubled by the memory of another priest I had seen for direction years and years before. Then Jesus told me to tell him about it, and I was like Sister Briege, you know, saying, “Ah, come on now, Jesus,” because I didn’t think he’d have anything insightful to say and it would just hurt too much. But the Lord told me I’d be surprised what he’d say. Well, I couldn’t see how he’d ever surprise me; I’m not so dumb… So I figured this promise of a surprise response was just one of those confusions between subconscious and superconscious, but anyway I went ahead with my story. And his answer astonished me. It took me months to get to the bottom of it. I’m not sure I’m there yet…
But in the process, I learned a lot about both confession and consecration. We really have to be willing to be led by God along very unexpected paths — that’s consecration. And then, under his guidance, the experience of confession, which is really just a special dimension of sharing your inner life with others so you can better share it with God, becomes life-renewing, a real gift of refreshment, insight, and peace.
And, of course, it helps to stop the denial of sin.
Now I’ve talked about presumption both from the point of view of remembering that mercy is a great but not an absolute relationship with God and from the point of view that we need to recognize and not deny the realities of sin and iniquity. But the greatest thing is to altogether avoid presuming on God’s mercy by seeking a relationship with him that is bused, not on shrewdness or bargaining or gamesmanship, but on consecration.
So I want to close by saying with Sister Briege, don’t have a place in your spiritual life marked:
Private Property,
Do Not Enter.
Because that’s presumption, to think you can find your way into the kingdom on your own. Share your whole life with Jesus, with your Father, with our Mother Spirit, and also share it with those you will be led to for spiritual companionship. And just put up one sign over every door in your house:
Consecrated.