© 2001 Nancy Bigelow
© 2001 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
What do you say to a four or five year old who looks up into your eyes and asks: “What does God look like?” I think the worst possible response is: “I don’t know.” I believe telling a child “I don’t know” suggests an I don’t care attitude. “I don’t care” is antithetical to any known concept about the God who cares for each of us so deeply he sent our Creator Son to Urantia to teach us how to ascend. Attitude is everything if a mortal is ever to set foot(?) on Paradise. I discovered (while watching a TV news clip about model aircraft) that even a lawn mower will ascend and actually fly if it attains the right attitude, which leads me to think a genuinely positive attitude might motivate a mortal to actually DO “the will of the Paradise Father.” [UB 120:4.1]
My preferred response to the question: “What does God look like?” is: “God looks like the way Jesus acts. This will or will not satisfy a child, depending; if a child’s face brightens with recognition of moral duty toward one’s fellows, this is a good sign — that child may already possess a Mystery Monitor. If the child expresses passive acceptance, or demands to know about eyes and ears and other body parts, it could be the opportune time to introduce those creature comprehensible attitudes/attributes of divinity known as “infinite goodness, endless mercy, matchless wisdom, superb character,” [UB 1:4.4] beauty, and truth. After all, you and I walk around each and every day carrying a live “Creator attribute” [UB 120:3.9] within our minds. (Makes me wonder why so many Urantians make so many off-kilter decisions.)
In our family, God looks pretty much like we’re going to look in a few million years (minus material bodies) if everyone develops a better attitude about Brussels sprouts, and begins behaving like Jesus and his brothers and sisters behaved when they were growing up. “The human Jesus saw God as being holy, just, and great as well as being true, beautiful and good. All these attributes of divinity he focused in his mind as the ‘will of the Father in heaven.’ ” [UB 196:0.2]
Our dictionaries do not analogize attribute (or attitude) with will, but it seems to me that had God not had a positive, purposeful attitude, he would not have willed the Eternal Son (and his attendant attributes) into existence, and they in turn would not have willed the Infinite Spirit in order to actively express God’s volition within and throughout the totality of his Creation.
On a TV show The Golden Girls, the most-golden matriarch is wont to say: “Picture this,” and she then goes on to evoke a verbal vignette more picturesque than the real thing. Humans on Urantia have usually pictured their gods as having distinctive heads. One of the most unusual looking Egyptian deities is the one with the Price-Pfister Pfaucet name Thoth. (Only a mother could love that face!) But even Thoth has human arms and legs. In the manner humans seem to need a beginning for everything, I think we also like to think a god can place a caring hand on a shoulder, or literally walk on water. I recall the time someone on one of the cyber-lists said she felt God hugging her. “The actuality of the existence of God is demonstrated in human experience by the indwelling of the divine presence, the spirit Monitor sent from Paradise to live in the mortal mind of man and there to assist in evolving the immortal soul of eternal survival.” [UB 1:2.3] If a mortal imagines God is hugging her, it’s no wonder she envisions God with arms; that’s how the human mind works. The brain stores an image (after the first hug) complete with arms and even the feeling of being hugged. However, “it is not necessary to see God with the eyes of the flesh in order to discern him by the faith-vision of the spiritualized [perfected] mind.” [UB 1:3.3]
In other words, what we mortals term the mind’s eye, is capable of experiencing a God-hugging without physically seeing or feeling any arms of any description.
God has never named himself (according to the Urantia Papers), but names attached to attributes, attitudes, and actions can help to explain an object (or person’s image), simply because names (over the years) have come to reflect characteristics, meanings, and even values. Millions of people on our planet believe JESUS has to look at least something like God, not only because they believe he is God’s only begotten Son, but they believe Jesus acts-out the features of God’s personality. The Urantia Papers teach that God’s personality represents everything he will ever be (and much, much more!).
“Personality is that feature of an individual which we know, and which enables us to identify such a being at some future time regardless of the nature and extent of changes in form, mind, or spirit status.” [UB 16:8.4] Noah Webster defines feature: 1. a. The make, form, or appearance, esp. of a person. b. Formerly, physical beauty. 2. The make or cast of a human face or of its parts; facial aspect. (Synonym, characteristic.) It would appear that who I am as a PERSON definitely conditions how other people will picture me, and I have learned from the Papers that my very own absolutely unique “prerogatives of personality” [UB 7:4.4] represent everything I can ever hope to be via my God-given free will. (Seems to me personal attitude can make or break a person’s image.)
Jesus supposedly asked his Apostles: “Why do you call me good?” Well, for one thing, if Jesus really is a manifestation of God, he can’t ever be less than genuinely very good because God personifies a perfectly good person from the get-go; God tells us that, Jesus told us that, and I believe it. Only a perfectly righteous God would have whomped-up a salvation scheme whose ONLY real requirement for eternal survival is that I, as a person, will strive to be as perfect in my sphere of existence as God is on Paradise. Becoming the Father and Son coexistent with the Infinite Spirit, God’s personal self is realized; he’s the first real and fully-aware-of-itperson, and therein lies his primary purpose for creating Creation, “ceaseless self-realization” [UB 1:5.15] within a master universe, where persons like us have a “first duty” to “strive for the attainment of the perfection of [the Master’s] divinity.” [UB 1:0.4]
“The term God always denotes personality.” [UB 0:2.10] God is the face of fettered causality. Personality identifies “the absolute unity of Deity.” [UB 1:5.10] “Personality in the supreme sense is the revelation of God to the universe of universes.” [UB 1:5.13] Prior to unification (personalization) as the original Trinity, Deity’s “image” is unfettered volition (albeit, perfect and purposeful will). In that state of “infinity of will,” [UB 0:3.24] Father-Infinite is able to fragment his prepersonal Mystery Monitors because Deity is pure essence of presence rather than a persona. “Adjusters are fragments of the ancestor of gravity.” [UB 107:6.6] Impersonal (prepersonal) spirit entities are without personal reference or identity (yet!). My FatherMonitor is a part of eternity-infinity prior to Father’s personalization on Paradise, and in the here-and-now, neither Nancy B. nor her Thought Controller possess a unified personality, so both of us are “prepersonal” in one sense.
The name God portrays a perfect person; “there is no thing lacking in the beauty and perfection of his righteous character.” [UB 2:2.5] More important, from my mortal point of view, “the perfect and imperfect are truly interrelated” and “absolutely controlled by one infinite mind,” and “therefore may the finite evolutionary creature ascend to Paradise in obedience to the Universal Father’s mandate: 'Be you perfect, even as I am perfect.”, [UB 56:0.2] “God is a universal spirit; God is the universal person.” [UB 1:3.5] God is the universal FATHER. “When all is said and done, the Father idea is still the highest human concept of God.” [UB 196:3.35] In other words, God is our real father in every sense of the human words father and person. How do I know that? I know it because I love God. “Only a person can love and be loved. Even beauty and truth would be divorced from survival hope if they were not attributes of a personal God, a loving Father.” [UB 1:7.3]
And “the spirit nature of the Universal Father is shared fully with his coexistent self, the Eternal Son of Paradise.” I’m thinking that if God the Father and God the Son share a nature, they also share the same attitudes and attributes; they probably look a whole lot alike in terms of image (maybe even figuratively). And “both the Father and Son in like manner share the universal and eternal spirit fully and unreservedly with their conjoint personality co-ordinate, the Infinite Spirit.” [UB 1:3.4] “The Infinite Spirit reflects in perfection not only the nature of the Paradise Father but also the nature of the Original Son.” [UB 8:2.1]
Has anyone else noticed how meaningful the prefix and word “in” is in the Papers? Indwelling and infinite Father fragment; “in reality;” [UB 158:1.8] “In personality.” [UB 0:6.8] “As I have lived with you in person, then shall I live in you.” [UB 180:4.2] “Down here I have taught you in proverbs and spoken to you in parables. I did so because you were only children in the spirit.” [UB 180:6.8] “You can argue over opinions about God, but experience with him and in him exists above and beyond all human controversy and mere intellectual logic.” [UB 1:6.6] Isn’t our experience with our Monitor experience IN God?
Like Father, like Son; personality look-alikes; mirror-images who reflect themselves (to us) via a Conjoint Actor acting on a stage known as the grand universe. Looks to me like it’s God’s infinite, positive, purposeful (willful) attitude-in-mind that begot his Son, and they (in turn, utilizing original mind and infinite volition), gave expression to the power of expression itself, the Infinite Spirit. Therefore, on our current level of reality, divine attitude = divine acting, and divine acting equivalates with divine doing. “Jesus’ religion consisted not merely in believing, but in actually doing, those things which the gospel required.” [UB 159:5.8] Think like Jesus, you’ll end-up acting just like Jesus day after day doing the Father’s will without even really thinking about it.
The three faces of God on Paradise are “FATHER, (Creator, Controller, and Upholder) SON, (Co-ordinate Creator, Spirit Controller, and Spiritual Administrator) and SPIRIT (Conjoint Actor, Universal Integrator, and Mind Bestower”). [UB 0:2.14] Well, at least I know who to look for even if I don’t know exactly what God looks like. (If he dresses as uniquely as the personalities he bestows, it will be a piece of cake to find him. Besides, by the time I get to Paradise, I will be seeing via the faith-vision of my mind’s eye not my eyes of the flesh. In my mind, seeing with a material eye of the flesh leads only to a faith-BELIEF; seeing with the mind’s eye leads to the actual faith of Jesus!)
“The Creator covers himself with light as with a garment and stretches out the heavens as a curtain.” [UB 1:0.1] “Said the seer of old: ”Lo, he goes by me, and I see him not; he passes on also, but I perceive him not.’ We may constantly observe the works of God, we may be highly conscious of the material evidences of his majestic conduct, but rarely may we gaze upon the visible manifestation of his divinity, not even to behold the presence of his delegated spirit of human indwelling,” [UB 1:3.2] known variously as a Mystery Monitor, Thought Changer, Thought Adjuster, Thought Controller, or Father Fragment. “‘The eyes of the Lord are in every place.’” [UB 3:3.1] In a very real sense, the pure energy fragment indwelling my mind is God looking right at me every moment of the day and night. God sees me, why can’t I see him?
“In the inner experience of man, mind is joined to matter,” but that somewhat computer-like joinery is toast at the time of mortal demise. “The technique of survival is embraced in those adjustments of the human will and those transformations in the mortal mind whereby such a God-conscious intellect gradually becomes spirit taught and eventually spirit led.” [UB 1:3.7] Readers of the Urantia Papers know that an actual spirit-factor of the Universal Father can live within the human mind, and we see in the quote from page 25 that this “presence” is sometimes “beheld.” Beheld? Beheld how? I thought spirit wasn’t discernible on our level of reality.
Noah Webster connotes the word behold with Lo! and Look! If the Creator “covers himself with light as with a garment,” what sort of clothing covers my Controller? “There is a characteristic light, a spirit luminosity, which accompanies this divine presence; on Urantia this phenomenon has sometimes been referred to as that 'true light which lights every man who comes into the world.” [UB 107:4.5] Lo! what does spirit luminosity Look! like? According to the Divine Counselor who indited the Foreword of the Urantia Papers, spirit luminosity “connotes the personality manifestation characteristic of spirit beings of diverse orders.” [UB 0:6.9] As I interpret that quote, spirit luminosity connotes both my Father fragment and my personality, because that “kind” of light is how God adjusts [UB 3:2.8] his omnipotence, omnipresence, and allknowingness in relation to my mortal mind.
In other words, although my Mystery Monitor is spoken of as a pre-personal spirit being, he is a form (“manifestation”) empowered to grow my soul at the same time he’s helping the two of us to become a brand-new personality-in-FACT at the time of our fusion. This business about the Adjuster being an impersonal entity finally makes some sense; our Monitors are pre-personal in that the First Great Source and Center was not yet personalized (on Paradise) when he fragmented our Mystery Monitors (and similar), and Thought Changer and I are pre-fusion in the same sense Deity was pre-fusion (unification) prior to the original Trinity. The Adjuster allows me to qualify for perfection of personality in almost the same sense Deity qualified itself at that moment of the first “absolute divinity-tension.” [UB 0:3.21]
What do you and I look like? We’re created in God’s image, but what does that really mean? And, why does God live within a light so bright, Urantians would be nuked if they got anywhere close to Paradise? (I guess if a person lives on the most perfect island in the middle of everything, and that island is the actual source of “all forms of reality,” [UB 0:4.11] then in truth, God can’t help it that he’s not exactly a dim bulb. Besides, there’s the “truth-fact” that Deity’s light bulb is a mind with a wattage that thought-up the idea of Reality in the first place. In my opinion, reality — the size of what it turned out to be-had to have been an absolutely BRILLIANT idea!) “They beheld Jesus in intimate converse with two brilliant beings clothed in the habiliments of the light of the celestial world. And Jesus’ face and form shone with the luminosity of a heavenly light.” [UB 158:1.8]
“The immensity and grandeur of the divine personality is beyond the grasp of the unperfected mind of evolutionary mortals,” but believe it or don’t, “‘the invisible things of God are partially understood by the things which are made.’” [UB 1:5.3] “In personality, mind ever intervenes between spirit and matter; therefore is the universe illuminated [interpreted] by three kinds of light: material light, intellectual insight, and spirit luminosity.” [UB 0:6.8] And therefore, ”today and as [we] are, [we] must discern the invisible Maker through his manifold and diverse creation, as well as through the revelation and ministration of his Sons.“ In other words, Father’s attributes and attitudes are visible via his Son, thence, via “his Sons and their numerous subordinates.” [UB 1:5.3]
“The transcendent goal of the children of time is to find the eternal God, to comprehend the divine nature, to recognize the Universal Father. God-knowing creatures have only one supreme ambition, just one consuming desire, and that is to become as they are in their spheres, like him as he is in his Paradise perfection of personality.” [UB 1:0.3] “I come forth from the Eternal, and I have repeatedly returned to the presence of the Universal Father. I know of the actuality and personality of the First Source and Center, the Eternal and Universal Father. I know that, while the great God is absolute, eternal, and infinite, he is also good, divine, and gracious. I know the truth of the great declarations: ‘God is spirit’ and ‘God is love,’ and these two ATTRIBUTES are most completely revealed to the universe in the Eternal Son.” [UB 1:3.8]
Did anyone see the movie Clifford starring Martin Short? As a child, Clifford manifests the quintessential devil’s son persona. Martin Short wore that attribute/ attitude on his face for the entire movie. I think each and every one of us wears and reflects the face of our personality via the way we act and especially the way we act toward one another. By the time you and I have finished the required learning and doing with the Melchizedeks, we will be taken to Salvington where each one of us will stand “face to face with the Sovereign of all Nebadon.” [UB 113:7.4] What will his face reflect? He has a perfect personality, and is in fact THE “pattern for all local universe personality from that of the Bright and Morning Star down to the lowest human creature of progressing animal evolution.” [UB 1:5.6] Our Master Michael probably looks just like Father, right?
Urantians can’t see God in the sense of seeing words or pictures on paper or a computer screen, but even blind people can see what God’s divine attributes look like via the light of intelligent mind. In fact, I think some blind people see God much better than sighted people do. There is a man named Eddie (who has won a good deal of money on the TV show Jeopardy), whose mind and personality humble me every time I see him on that show. As far as I know he’s been blind from birth, but as I have observed his facial expressions during each contest, I have seen a mind so illuminated by the first two types of universal light, I fully expect to see his guardian seraphim pushing the signal button. “The guardian seraphim are not mind, though they do spring from the same source that also gives origin to mortal mind, the Creative Spirit. Seraphim are mind stimulators; seraphim function as teachers of men by guiding the footsteps of the human personality into paths of new and progressive experiences.” [UB 113:4.3] I see Eddie (the Jeopardy contestant) as beautiful (as well as good) not because of his physical appearance, but because his face radiates cosmic beauty; he’s full to overflowing with the joy of the “conviction of truth.” [UB 180:5.1] I think he looks like a beautiful attitude coupled with a bounteous personality, working with a mind which appreciates “the eternal fitness of those things which impinge upon the recognition of divine goodness in Deity relations with all beings.” [UB 56:10.8] Eddie is living his life in the manner of Jesus, being all that he can be. The notion that Eddie seems to see divine attributes without the use of material eyes seems to suggest that most mortals on Urantia are confused about the meaning of terms like God and divinity simply because they’re hung-up on God’s having to have a physical image. What God DID and still DOES is what really matters (in my mind).
I figure the secret of doing the perfect thing is in first trying to have a near-perfect thought based on the way Jesus thinks about things. I can turn to any page in any one of the Jesus Papers and see how Jesus thinks and how those thoughts playout. I figure-strive to be as perfect in my mind as I am able, even if I am unable to be perfect anywhere else, simply because God is perfect in his mind from the moment of that first thought which began everyTHING Urantians ultimately ended-up seeing on Urantia. I figure if a person wants to know what God looks like as a person, he or she needs to know how and what God is thinking, which always leads to how God acts, and he never varies in his “dependable way of divine acting.” [UB 120:4.6]
Jesus teaches great stuff about behavior because he was fully committed to “the teaching of the everpresent divine spirit of human guidance,” [UB 120:3.9] his Adjuster. No question in my mind that my Thought Controller has the right attitudes, or I probably wouldn’t still be alive. My teenage attitudes were 93% negative, and right up to the time the Urantia Papers leaped-off a library shelf and almost bruised my toe, my adult attitudes were extremely selfserving. Now that I’m finally beginning to see via two lights of truth (my Mystery Monitor and the Spirit of Truth), I recognize that right attitude equals right attribute which may, in turn, reality-ize my eternal soul. For example, it is in my power to learn how to care for (love) another person in the very manner Jesus taught the principle of caring; “Jesus made the care of God for man like the solicitude of a loving father for the welfare of his dependent children and then made this teaching the cornerstone of his religion.” [UB 159:5.7]
Our Father always knows the best way to behave, and he also always manifests himself in that “usual way” — in the normal, natural, and dependable way of divine acting. [UB 120:4.6] Epochal Revelations always manifest God in the same miraculous manner; therefore, if you have seen those divine Sons, you have glimpsed the Father because you have witnessed God’s sincerity. The attainment of goals of sonship, service, and salvation is directly proportionate with the level of sincerity.
Not long ago, a Urantia Papers faith-believer asked: What was Jesus’ secret? I believe Jesus’ secret is that he never abandoned the sincere attitude of a child. We know that during the incarnation, Jesus and our Michael shared the same personality, so from the moment Michael left Salvington with a fullydivine desire to do our Father’s will, he was able to maintain that level of sincerity for the entire span of his mortality. Right attitude right attribute which yields right action, “always.”
“Urantia mortals have varying concepts of the miraculous, but to us who live as citizens of the local universe there are few miracles, and of these by far the most intriguing are the incarnational bestowals of the Paradise Sons. The appearance in and on your world, by apparently natural processes, of a divine Son, we regard as a miracle — the operation of universal laws beyond our understanding. Jesus of Nazareth was a miraculous person, but make no mistake; Christ Michael was not a double personality. He was not God in association with man but, rather, God incarnate in man. Christ Michael did not progressively become God. God did not, at some vital moment in the earth life of Jesus, become man. And this God and this man were, and now are, one, even as the Paradise Trinity of three beings is in reality Deity.” [UB 120:4.3] What does Jesus look like? Well, in my mind, he certainly looks like the best way to find God.
Picture the presence of Deity; picture the Father. (I find it helps to envision all that I perceive is potential in a UNIVERSAL Father’s attitude/attribute of love.) “Divine truth must not be discounted because the channel of its bestowal is apparently human. Many of your brethren have minds which accept the theory of God while they spiritually fail to realize the presence of God. And that is just the reason why I have so often taught you that the kingdom of heaven can best be realized by acquiring the spiritual attitude of a sincere child. It is not the mental immaturity of the child that I commend to you but rather the spiritual simplicity of such an easy-believing and fully-trusting little one. It is not so important that you should know about the fact of God as that you should increasingly grow in the ability to feel the presence of God.” [UB 155:6.12]
Picture the presence of Divinity; picture God’s only begotten Son (or Jesus, whichever you prefer.) Picture in your MIND’S eye the attitudes and attributes of Jesus (as he lived the truth 2000 years ago), because “divine truth is a spirit-discerned reality,” [UB 180:5.2] and God’s actual reality is discerned via the “living ministry” [UB 0:6.8] of the Infinite Spirit and his offspring. The mortal mind is tremendously influential “as a factor in spiritual choosing.” [UB 67:3.7] “Why have you lingered so long before choosing to follow the LIGHT of truth with a whole heart?” [UB 190:2.6] “Light-spirit luminosity,” [UB 0:6.9] was/is the source of Jesus’ faith. “His faith was the out-growth of the insight (illumination) born of the activity of the divine presence, his indwelling Adjuster.” [UB 196:0.1] Seems to me, that in order to picture deity and divinity, I need Look! no further than in my mind.
“Come, therefore, all of you into the fellowship of the Spirit of Truth in the Father’s kingdom.” [UB 190:2.6] “Today I can be with you only in person. In the times to come I will be with you and all other men who desire my presence, wherever you may be, and with each of you at the same time. Do you not discern that it is better for me to go away; that I leave you in the flesh so that I may the better and the more fully be with you in the spirit?” [UB 180:4.1] “All true prayers are addressed to spiritual beings, and all such petitions must be answered in spiritual terms, and all such answers must consist in spiritual realities.” “Material beings can pray effectively only when they ‘pray IN the SPIRIT.’” [UB 168:4.9] In the spirit is the manner in which a Spirit-fused mortal has “in spirit obeyed the Father’s command, 'Be you perfect.” [UB 37:5.3]
(Said Judas Alpheus): “If the world SEES you not, how shall we be certain about you? How will you SHOW yourself to us?” [UB 180:4.4] Jesus answered: “In a very short time I am going to send you my spirit, just LIKE me except for this material body. This new teacher is the Spirit of Truth who will live with each one of you, in your hearts, and so will all the children of light be made one and be drawn toward one another. And in this very manner will my Father AND I be able to live in the souls of each one of you and also in the hearts of all other men who love us and make that love real in their experiences by loving one another, even as I am loving you.” [UB 180:4.5]
What does God look like? He looks like the way Jesus lived and taught and loved, but more important, God looks the way our burgeoning, Urantia Papersconditioned souls are beginning to look. You and I can see God clearly any time we want to just by looking inward at our Monitors. See how busy they are? They never sleep in order that, together, we will sometime see God on Paradise. “As a reality in human spiritual experience God is not a mystery.” [UB 1:4.7] A progressive soul mirrors God’s truth(s) and love and life itself. (Lo! I don’t think I want to know what a static-truth soul looks like.)
Nancy Bigelow lives in Hawaii with her husband, Bill. She described her life for us in her unique and creative style, and with a self-effacing charm that defies the euphemistic touch of editorial embellishment:
“Achieved what the Papers term ‘physical identity’ October 10. 1938, Cleveland, Ohio. Lovable, but extremely defiant child raised by utterly devoted and loving parents. Managed to escape incarceration during teenage years somewhat in the manner of that Urantia Papers frog who waltzed around lightning bolts & became the ancestor of Urantian mankind. Somehow succeeded in college (all the while maintaining defiant attitude) and was graduated with a degree in zoology and secondary education. Snagged a wonderful man at the same time received teaching certificate & have spent the bulk of my life becoming a dilettante. Mission: change dilettante status via the Fifth Epochal Revelation.”