© 2002 The Brotherhood of Man Library
In the second of the Urantia Papers, “The Nature of God,” the revelators suggest:
“The religious challenge of this age is to those farseeing and forward-looking men and women of spiritual insight who will dare to construct a new and appealing philosophy of living out of the enlarged and exquisitely integrated modern concepts of cosmic truth, universe beauty, and divine goodness. Such a new and righteous vision of morality will attract all that is good in the mind of man and challenge that which is best in the human soul.” (UB 2:7.10)
The phrase, “enlarged and exquisitely integrated modern concepts of cosmic truth, universe beauty, and divine goodness,” is obviously self-referential for nowhere is there to be found a more exquisite statement of such truths than are presented in the Urantia Papers. The author of this Paper continues:
“Truth is coherent, beauty attractive, goodness stabilizing. And when these values of that which is real are coordinated in personality experience, the result is a high order of love conditioned by wisdom and qualified by loyalty. The real purpose of all universe education is to effect the better co-ordination of the isolated child of the worlds with the larger realities of his expanding experience.” (UB 2:7.12)
Surely another major purpose of this revelation is education—with spreading its message in forms that are comprehensible to people of every race and religion and at every level of spiritual and intellectual capacity
And the crux of the message? God loves and cares about each individual; the love and mercy of God as our heavenly Father transcends his righteousness as our judge; God’s forgiveness is available simply for the asking; all human beings are indwelt by the God-Spirit who loves us, serves us, and guides us; the relationship of the indwelling God-Spirit and the individual is personal and authoritative; acceptance of the way of God ensures our eternal life; the way of God is the will of God; no man-ordained declarations or decrees can in any way impinge upon or moderate these inalienable dictums.
For Christians this message can be enlarged to include the life of Jesus as the revelation of the nature of that aspect of God whom Jesus addressed as “Abba,” the Aramaic for “Papa” or “loving Father.” It can also include reference to Jesus’ Spirit of Truth and its function but there is no need for either when carrying the message to non-Christians. Jesus did not insist that the Jews believe in him, only in “He who sent him.” One step at a time is enough. The critical knowledge for all of us is that we can achieve God-consciousness through our indwelling God-Spirit.
We must learn from the past. Attacking the religious beliefs of others is almost always counter-productive. Change has to be gradual, seeking only to displace error rather than to decry it.
By far the best way to encourage change is to demonstrate its advantages. Both Christianity and the Urantia revelation advocate making such demonstrations through the lives actually lived by their adherents. The communications revolution has brought innovative options. New concepts may more readily be publicized through TV, radio, the Internet. But what does not change is the irreplaceable and ongoing need for those real-life demonstrations in the lives of believers without which all else is devoid of any real meaning. A remark by a Roman citizen from almost 2000 years ago is illustrative: “See those Christians, how much they love one another.”
Within twenty five years of Jesus’ crucifixion, Christianity had spread from Palestine, through Syria, Southeast Asia, to Macedonia, and had even become firmly established in Rome. And within three hundred years it had become the official religion of the Roman Empire. What was the explanation for this extraordinary phenomenon. Huston Smith4 ascribes it to three main factors—the relief Christian concepts brought to its neophytes from the fear of death, the fear of punishment for sin, and the debilitating burden of self-condemnation. These remain today as powerful influences that drive many self-condemned “wretched sinners” to seek their salvation through the church.
Dominant among these is the salvation from sin through the sacrificial death of Christ. Even today the belief is widespread that forgiveness for sin can only be attained by some deed as drastic as the sacrificial spilling of blood.
In attempting to take the advanced teachings of the Urantia Papers to a wider audience, we must be aware that less than 35% of even high school seniors have attained the degree of literacy required to attain competence over “challenging subject-matter knowledge. . . and its application to real world situations.5”
If we extrapolate that conclusion to the general population, we may see that only a small section of the populations of even “advanced” countries are ever likely to be exposed to the vital revelatory information given us in the Urantia Papers. Means other than handing out The Urantia Book need to be found.
By many light-years, the most enlightening teaching from both Christianity and the Urantia revelation concerns the direct relationship of the individual to the indwelling Spirit of God. But it must be backed up with knowledge of the true nature of God and the demonstration of its effectiveness in the lives of individuals. Eventual failure becomes a certainty unless believers seriously attempt to live their lives in accord with Jesus’ teaching—“De Imitatione Christi.”
“Christianity has indeed done a great service for this world, but what is now most needed is Jesus. The world needs to see Jesus living again on earth in the experience of spirit-born mortals who effectively reveal the Master to all men.” (UB 195:10.1)
“Your mission to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-revealing life among you; on the truth you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall consist in the life that you live among men—the actual and living experience of loving men and serving them, even as I have loved and served you.” (UB 191:5.3)
“The living Jesus is the only hope of a possible unification of Christianity. The true church—the Jesus brotherhood—is invisible, spiritual. . . ” (UB 195:10.11)
But why should it be the task of Urantians to be concerned about Christians and the Christian church? Well, the revelators say so:
“What a transcendent service if, through this revelation, the Son of Man should be recovered from the tomb of traditional theology and be presented as the living Jesus to the church that bears his name. . . ” (UB 196:1.2)
Finally we need to know what we are trying to do:
“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 his 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)
What might constitute a minimal core of knowledge that could guide all committed followers of Jesus’ revelation of God to dedicate their rest of their lives to that fundamental task set us by Jesus, “Be you therefore perfect even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect,” (Matthew 5:48)?
Two things stand out—a realistic appreciation of the true nature of God and of the reality and purpose of the Father-Spirit that indwells the minds of all normal humans. Jesus’ parables, in particular, inform us of the gracious and compassionate nature of God—parables such as the good Samaritan who demonstrated love and compassion to his traditional enemy, a Jew; the prodigal son who received the forgiveness of his father even before he asked; and the earthly father whose love prevented him from giving harmful gifts to his child who had asked for bread.
The latter parable is exceedingly powerful. It encourages us to ask the question, “Would a truly good earthly father do such a thing? If not, how can I believe the heavenly Father would do so?” It is by addressing such questions to the God-Spirit-Within that we can gain personal insight into the true meaning of those divine qualities that are the goal of our perfection-seeking. There are more than twenty verses in the New Testament telling of the God-Spirit-Within—knowledge commonly held among early Christians but which since became lost. Examples are:
“God is love. He that dwells in love dwells in God and God in him.” (1 John 4:16)
“Guard those noble things given to you by the Spirit of God that dwells within.” (2 Timothy 1:14)
“Surely you know that you are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit dwells within you.” (1 Cor. 3:16)
“We are sure that we live in union with God and that he lives in union with us because he has given us his Spirit.” (1 John 4:13)
“But you live not in the flesh but in the spirit if it so be that God dwells in you.” (Romans 8:16)
For hundreds of years ahead our major task will be to bring the primary teachings of the Papers to a world population that, at best, is only marginally literate.
Genes are the basic units of heredity. About 30,000 of them cooperate to specify that you are an individual member of the human species. Genes are passed on by parents to the individuals of the next generation. They control the evolution of the species.
For a society, memes are the equivalent of genes. Together they regulate cultural aspects of the society and tend to be passed on, generation by generation. They specify the evolution of that society.
“Jesus died for my sins,” is a powerful meme that has had a controlling influence on the behavior of Christian societies for nigh on 2000 years. Because of what it implies about the nature of God, it must now be updated or Christianity will founder and die.
Short, sharp memes have the potential to redirect Christianity along new pathways—those that we can discover in the Urantia Papers—that will ensure the revival and survival of Jesus’ Fourth Epochal Revelation. The two most powerful can be stated in many ways. They are:
Short sharp memes like these have the power to do what the Urantia Papers alone cannot do—get through to the average human individual.
However a meme has little or no power unless it is served up repeatedly. It needs to be moved from short term to long term memory and then served up in new ways until it becomes an instrument of evolutionary change.
There is one more effective instrument of evolutionary change than a meme. That is a human life lived in complete accord with Jesus’ original revelation—his life.
Developing a personal relationship with the God-Spirit-Within is primary for living a life in the imitation of Jesus. Having achieved such a personal relationship, “you are led by the Spirit and are no longer under the law” (Galatians 5:18). The God-Within becomes our sole authority for all that relates to our life of loving God and loving our neighbor as Jesus loved us.
Four hundred years ago, the Society of Friends, the Quakers, founded a Christian sect based upon the concept that the Spirit of God indwells us. Their firm belief was that the direct apprehension of God by the individual, without creeds, clergy, or other ecclesiastical forms, would lead to the purification of all Christendom. Now, four hundred years later, though still with us, this belief of the Quakers has made almost no inroads upon mainstream Christianity.
The error of the Quakers may have been disproportionate attention being given to secular affairs at the expense of spiritual progress—perhaps because of an inadequate understanding of what “spirituality” really implies. Consequently, the lives of individuals were less than inspirational for other Christians. Memes may help in keeping essential concepts to the forefront. An example—the events of September last have highlighted the terrorist madness that threatens the whole world. The threat of terrorism becoming a permanent institution can only be forestalled by spiritualization of the human race. But what does spiritualization really imply? Being an abstract concept, it cannot be precisely defined. Jesus illustrated it thus:
“It will not be so much by the words you speak as by the lives you live that men will know you have been with me and have learned of the realities of the kingdom.”
Jesus’ life is the perfect meme for the meaning of spiritualization.
But care is required to ensure that we do not deceive ourselves. If concepts and ideas, such as those that follow, conflict with the way we actually live our personal lives, we, like the Quakers, will also fail.