© 1992 Merlyn Cox
© 1992 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
It has often been said that the reason many people have trouble believing the Good News is that it is simply too good to be true. The idea of divine incarnation, God revealing himself in human form, still seems too intimate, too good, to be quite believable. Jesus’ teaching of the Creator’s relation to his creatures as that of an infinitely wise and loving parent strikes many as wishful projection. Jesus, no doubt, was a good and great, even heroic man; but surely he can’t be all the church has made him out to be. Again, that would simply be too much to believe — too good to be true.
There are contemporary New Testament scholars who tend to view Jesus as a wise, uncommonly sensitive, “God intoxicated Jew,” whose mystical tendencies were rewarded with insights the vast majority of mortals never approach. At the same time, however, it is assumed his understanding was necessarily limited by his own first century theology and cosmology, particularly that of Jewish apocalypticism.
Therefore, while he is at once a model of virtue and a teacher of higher righteousness, he ultimately misunderstood his own divine mission, which makes him admirable but something less than “the way, the truth, and the life.” The idea of the incarnation becomes severely compromised, if not irrelevant, for many.
I know pastors who shy away from using John’s gospel because of the apparent immodesty of Jesus “ claims recorded there: not just ”I am the light of the world“ or ”I am the bread of life,“ but ”I am the resurrection and the life“ and ”Before Abraham was, I am." John’s emphasis on the divinity of Jesus is glossed over in favor of the synoptics’ more human one. In a world still largely dominated by a secular, materialistic mindset, such claims of divinity are by definition mythical, at best having no more than poetic truth.
The Urantia Book offers a picture of Jesus’ integrated divine and human natures that, while still beyond explanation, is reasonable and profoundly reassuring.
The Urantia Book offers a picture of Jesus’ integrated divine and human natures that, while still beyond explanation, is reasonable and profoundly reassuring. The classical Christian affirmation regarding Jesus’ humanity and divinity, his preexistence as well as his full earthly humanity, is uncompromisingly affirmed. The book reflects and amplifies the truth of John’s witness and further says to us, as Jesus said to those who questioned his claim: “I am all that you say but more.” (UB 153:2.11)
Indeed, in The Urantia Book, not only is Jesus more than we may have dared believe, but Reality itself is far more gracious and intelligent and purposeful than we had imagined, or were even capable of imagining. “What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived…” is illustrated by fact after fact and layer upon layer of insight integrated into a coherent and understandable whole.
Indeed, in The Urantia Book, not only is Jesus more than we may have dared believe, but Reality itself is far more gracious and intelligent and purposeful than we had imagined, or were even capable of imagining.
In reading many of the descriptions of new theories in science one regularly finds words such as “elegance,” “symmetry” and “charm.” Many scientists affirm that great truths are essentially simple and “beautiful” because of the way they integrate and harmonize other known facts. Poincaré, the great mathematician, said that in terms of useful discoveries the most useful are precisely the most beautiful. Werner Heisenberg, a noble prize winner, said that the researcher in physics recognizes the truth by “the splendor of its beauty.”
Many serious students of The Urantia Book are at first intrigued and then awed by the graceful integration of theological, philosophical and scientific realities. For all of the complex aspects of reality dealt with in its 2,000 pages, there emerges a harmony that is convincing, awe inspiriting and profoundly beautiful. In The Urantia Book the Good News is indeed even better than we had hoped for. In fact, many have found The Urantia Book itself too good and too beautiful not to be true.
“To ‘follow Jesus’ means to personally share his religious faith and to enter into the spirit of the Master’s life of unselfish service for man. One of the most important things in human living is to find out what Jesus believed, to discover his ideals, and to strive for the achievement of this exalted life purpose. Of all human knowledge, that which is of greatest value is to know the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it.” (UB 196:1.3)