© 2017 Michelle Klimesh
© 2017 The Urantia Book Fellowship
| The Shroud of Turin and The Urantia Papers | Volume 17, Number 1, 2017 (Summer) — Index | What Does The Urantia Book Tell Us Needs to be Accomplished? |
I opened the atlas and asked,
“Where does it hurt?”
And it answered
Everywhere
Everywhere
Everywhere
C.S. Lewis described the earth as enemy-occupied territory. There is no doubt that Urantia is a tough neighborhood. Lucifer’s betrayal was followed by Adam and Eve’s default, which was followed by the torture and murder of our Creator Son… clearly, this is not a normal planet.
We face horrific problems.
War, terrorism, refugee displacements
Racial, economic, and sexual abuse
Corruption in politics and business
Environmental destruction
Failure of education
Crime, drug addiction, human trafficking
Do you notice that everything on the list springs from human behavior? We know that difficulties are inherent in the evolutionary process. In [UB 2:5.8] a Divine Counselor says, “When I observe the Creator Sons and their subordinate administrators struggling so valiantly with the manifold difficulties of time inherent in the evolution of the universes of space, I discover that I bear these lesser rulers of the universes a great and profound affection.”
God decided that it was a good idea to create imperfect beings, operating in imperfect universes. What was he thinking?
We should not underestimate the near-complete strangeness of the human creature. Living the human experience, we may be lulled into imagining that ours is a normal state of being, but think about it dispassionately. We live in bodies made of meat and bone, bodies evolved from fighting animals. Into this primitive, fragile vehicle, God has downloaded a pure spirit fragment. Animal imbued with spirit is the nature of our species.
The animal part of us comes equipped with survival mechanisms that help protect us in dangerous situations. But when we try to protect ourselves by separating from others, by ostracizing people who are different, by staying away from other races, religions, and cultures; then our animal selves are at odds with our spiritual development.
Our human fears try to protect us by building walls around our hearts, our thoughts, our homes, and even our neighborhoods. But the walls between people, the walls built by our fears, are precisely what created the problems we now face. Instead of protecting us, the walls perpetrate distrust and animosity that endangers us all.
Anything that tends to move us toward separation from each other, even our own human instincts, should be suspect. The influence from these animal defense mechanisms is powerful and pervasive; it should not be underestimated.
Why did God set things up this way? I don’t know. Paper UB 3:5 describes how evolutionary life is beset by certain inevitabilities—hardships, error, predicaments, social inequalities—challenges that help us develop into the creatures God needs us to become. Since God allows us to struggle with this phase of development, we must assume that our participation in the system accrues to some permanent spiritual value. The difficulties we face here are the fodder for our own spiritual growth.
As depressing as it sounds, the fact that our problems are caused by people is good news. If humans have the power to cause these problems, we also have the power to solve them.
Here’s more good news. We already know these problems will be eradicated, because we know that the destiny of our world is to be settled in light and life. Paper 55 provides an alluring vision of the future. Imagine such a time on Urantia; a time when poverty has vanished, the races are blended, and the sexes work in partnership. Insanity has been eliminated. Economics are ethical, and people are essentially self-governing. Science, industry, and arts flourish. Armies no longer exist because wars are something studied in history books.
We know this is where we’re headed.
It is crucial for us to focus on the future toward which we are progressing instead of imagining that our current problems are permanent. People on our planet will live in light and life, and those of us who know that should keep a laser-like attention on the time when people have already solved the problems we face today.
Then the question becomes, “How do we get there from here?”
As you may imagine, Jesus has something to say about it:
Then came forward one of the groups of the Pharisees to ask harassing questions, and the spokesman, signaling to Jesus, said: “Master, I am a lawyer, and I would like to ask you which, in your opinion, is the greatest commandment?” Jesus answered: “There is but one commandment, and that one is the greatest of all, and that commandment is: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second commandment is like this first; indeed, it springs directly therefrom, and it is: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these; on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” [UB 174:4.2]
The evening before he was killed, Jesus amended his instruction:
After a few moments of informal conversation, Jesus stood up and said: “When I enacted for you a parable indicating how you should be willing to serve one another, I said that I desired to give you a new commandment; and I would do this now as I am about to leave you. You well know the commandment which directs that you love one another; that you love your neighbor even as yourself. But I am not wholly satisfied with even that sincere devotion on the part of my children. I would have you perform still greater acts of love in the kingdom of the believing brotherhood. And so I give you this new commandment: That you love one another even as I have loved you. And by this will all men know that you are my disciples if you thus love one another. [UB 180:1.1]
First, we are to love God with our whole hearts and souls and minds and strength. Second, we are to prove it by loving each other. How do we do that? Back to the book:
In the mind’s eye conjure up a picture of one of your primitive ancestors of cave-dwelling times―a short, misshapen, filthy, snarling hulk of a man standing, legs spread, club upraised, breathing hate and animosity as he looks fiercely just ahead. Such a picture hardly depicts the divine dignity of man. But allow us to enlarge the picture. In front of this animated human crouches a saber-toothed tiger. Behind him, a woman and two children. Immediately you recognize that such a picture stands for the beginnings of much that is fine and noble in the human race, but the man is the same in both pictures. Only, in the second sketch you are favored with a widened horizon. You therein discern the motivation of this evolving mortal. His attitude becomes praiseworthy because you understand him. If you could only fathom the motives of your associates, how much better you would understand them. If you could only know your fellows, you would eventually fall in love with them. [UB 100:4.5]
You cannot truly love your fellows by a mere act of the will. Love is only born of thoroughgoing understanding of your neighbor’s motives and sentiments. It is not so important to love all men today as it is that each day you learn to love one more human being. If each day or each week you achieve an understanding of one more of your fellows, and if this is the limit of your ability, then you are certainly socializing and truly spiritualizing your personality. Love is infectious, and when human devotion is intelligent and wise, love is more catching than hate. But only genuine and unselfish love is truly contagious. If each mortal could only become a focus of dynamic affection, this benign virus of love would soon pervade the sentimental emotion-stream of humanity to such an extent that all civilization would be encompassed by love, and that would be the realization of the brotherhood of man. [UB 100:4.6]
Honestly, the solution to our list of problems is that we need to fall in love with each other. We need to get to know, really know, people who are not like us. We need to deeply listen to them so well that we fall in love with them. We need to stop listening to our animal instincts and start obeying the commandment to love each other the way God loves us. We need to trust God, the same God who set up the system that allowed us to be born onto this strange planet with all of these horrible problems and difficulties. We need to trust God completely, enough that we’re willing to trust people who are not like us. Even if they are a different color than we are. Even if they are a different gender, practice a different religion, or register with a different political party; even if they aren’t perfect; even if we aren’t perfect.
The only way we are going to activate the “benign virus” is to go outside of our natural comfort zones, and get close enough to be infected. Once infected, we need to return to the people with whom we identify, and help convince them of the value of the people who are different than we are.
Humans will solve these problems as soon as we learn to love each other so well that the whole world is infected with the contagious virus of love. It’s obviously easier said than done. We may as well get started.
This article is a written reflection of a presentation given to the Urantia Book Society of Los Angeles in September 2016.
Michelle Klimesh, past President of the Fellowship, author of The Story of Everything, has been reading The Urantia Book since 1974. She is a member and past President of the Golden Gate Circle; attends study groups in San Ramon and Walnut Creek; and resides alternately in San Ramon, California and Spillville, Iowa.
| The Shroud of Turin and The Urantia Papers | Volume 17, Number 1, 2017 (Summer) — Index | What Does The Urantia Book Tell Us Needs to be Accomplished? |