© 2005 Mel Quinn
© 2005 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
| Significant Books: “Astrobiology: The Origins of Life and the Death of Darwinism” by Rhawn Joseph | Spring 2005 — Index |
In thirty years of acquaintance with The Urantia Book, no part of the revelation has inspired me more than the papers on the Supreme.
The world-class cosmologist and mathematician, Stephen Hawking, is known to have said that “we know how the universe began, but we just don’t know why.” No better answer to this question can be found than in The Urantia Book’s papers on the Supreme.
The concept of the Supreme brings an elevating factor into the processes of time and so implicitly into the stories of our lives. It sieves, cleanses and establishes in a state of forever all the true, good and beautiful meanings and values of our earth careers, and artfully links these experiential values with the grand enterprises of eternity.
To convey the inspiration to be received from the idea of the Supreme, I offer here my personal interpretations, which may or may not meet the test of a strict exegesis of the text. Also, I set aside distinctions in the text between the Supreme Being, God the Supreme, and the Almighty Supreme, choosing instead the term “the Supreme” to represent all of that — the totality of that Being who is and is becoming.
The text suggests that the Supreme arises from the Trinity in recognition that the Father I AM — All that Is, the forever and forever all-perfect Absolute — is tantamount to being in a straight jacket. Absolute-bound, perfection petrified, prisoner of his own grandeur, what more can the Father I AM be? What might he yet desire? What might he yet become?
This breakout of the I Am from the symmetry of pure and absolute existence is conjectured by science to be the “bang” of our beginning; more to truth, it is an echo of mighty purpose, the surge of Infinite Potential into finite condition to develop new expressions of itself.
To be more than the I AM is, the Absolute of Reality must break from the symmetry of pure and absolute perfection and inaugurate a becoming that is not germane to his Absolute Being.
The unbinding of the Absolute from absolute condition occurs when he decides to transfer something of his infinite potential from infinite to finite, from a state of pure and perfect being to a state of unperfected experiential becoming.
This breakout of the I Am from the symmetry of pure and absolute existence is conjectured by science to be the “bang” of our beginning; more to truth, it is an echo of mighty purpose, the surge of Infinite Potential into finite condition to develop new expressions of itself.
So, in God’s plan comes the finite. This wondrous but not perfect place is framed by time and space to be the causeway of God’s own passage from Being to Being’s Becoming.
The Father I Am loves his finite becoming, desires to be part of, one with all experiencing subjects (you and I) of this becoming. His indwelling us is for this.
Infinite Perfection chooses to exist in the soultemples of our individual human likenesses because it is precisely at this near-animal rung of personal existence that I AM takes up again the greatest journey ever undertaken in the greatest story ever told: the coming into being of the Will of the ages, the emergence into glory of the Supreme, the Mighty God of Experience.
We trail the clouds of glory of the Supreme in this development. More significantly, we continue it. The stored treasures of our souls, the meanings and values of our lives, are delivered into the arc of the Supreme as it rises over the world and into the beyond.
Great love is enacting this, and great aim. For the Supreme, God’s becoming, in union with finite existents is the all-glorious, otherwise not possible, supreme completion of Original I AM — the “how” or the “more” of his being, the rising thunderhead of God’s eternity.
Evidence of the Supreme’s time development is written across the annals of cosmic and terrestrial history: first, the cosmic forces, then the elements, then a quibble of chemical mass, a blob of protoplasm, then development through the phyla of the organic — worm, insect, fish, frog; then the jump to hairy primate, becoming erect, looking like us, hairless, and adorned with features more refined and manners more civil, growing in grace until ready for holding court with angels.
We trail the clouds of glory of the Supreme in this development. More significantly, we continue it. The stored treasures of our souls, the meanings and values of our lives, are delivered into the arc of the Supreme as it rises over the world and into the beyond.
All people in all evolving universes of all creation sojourn with us in this supreme adventure of time and experience. “Heroes of a thousand (other) faces” join us in the becoming of the God of Experience. A vision of joy comes to view when the revelation suggests that all things and beings of love-laden (deathless) value mount together into endless glory in the interconnecting halls of the Supremacy of Being.
In this grand precession we hold a trailing but important place. The revelation reports that agencies on high envy we “carbon units” who taste the entire spectrum of evolutionary creation from the pulsings of first particles, to electro/chemical stirrings, to flights of Spirit.
In this grand precession we hold a trailing but important place. The revelation reports that agencies on high envy we “carbon units” who taste the entire spectrum of evolutionary creation from the pulsings of first particles, to electro/chemical stirrings, to flights of Spirit.
While this time-ticking, moment by moment, showing and passing on of Being’s becoming is planned to be orderly in growth, it suffers turbulence and rendings of its progress in the stormy fallen-ness of free will human affairs, as here on earth.
Yet the revelation tells us we can handle disruptions in creation’s plan. Father endowed, Christ accompanied, Spirit inspired, angel attended, we are indeed will equipped to prove the primacy of Spirit and to build the sinews of the Supreme even amid trying difficulty.
The Supreme grows as our souls grow. The tendrils of its spirit extend from the works of our hands, the choices of our lives. At this level of creation, our caring is the Supreme’s substance and function. Our loving thoughts, words and deeds bring its healing creativity to the world.
Clearly, God has made us his complements and partners in the evolution of the Supreme. In fact it is the secret of the ages and the “why” of our existence that the Father I AM finds His own Supreme identity in the beings of His creation who experience becoming.
This is why the Father sends personality-bare fragments of himself to indwell us and seek to be the persons we are. By the leading of this Presence, a destiny of fused creator/creature existence in the glories of the Supreme is ours to choose. Indeed, the most inspiring idea in The Urantia Book’s revelation of the Supreme is that God has already chosen his children of the evolving universes to be the “more” of his being, the further completion of himself. What better answer is there to the “why” of our being here?
Mel Quinn is a long time reader of The Urantia Book and a member of the Fort Wayne Society study group.
| Significant Books: “Astrobiology: The Origins of Life and the Death of Darwinism” by Rhawn Joseph | Spring 2005 — Index |