© 2024 Richard E. Warren
© 2024 International Urantia Association (IUA)
Richard E. Warren, USA
¶ Part 1 of 3
To material, evolutionary, finite creatures, a life predicated on the living of the Father’s will leads directly to the attainment of spirit supremacy in the personality arena and brings such creatures one step nearer the comprehension of the Father-Infinite. Such a Father life is one predicated on truth, sensitive to beauty, and dominated by goodness. UB 106:9.12
When the adventure of organizing time and space began, God commanded an imperfect universe to: “Be you perfect, even as I am perfect.” In time, along with the rest of creation, we will attain perfection and satisfy this preeminent and organizing command from the Father of all by living truth, creating beauty, and performing goodness.
The Father’s freewill act created the master universe wherein we take up life, love, and service. Our cumulative freewill acts create a soul out of divine values. The soul then unites with God to explore the universe. Day by day we choose values that gradually unify us with God’s values; truth, goodness, and beauty–or else we make choices that are disunifying. Every step we take is either in harmony with the Father’s perfect will or the opposite. Our first step toward Paradise perfection is taken here on Urantia, our first moral choice. It causes the divine fragment to descend from Paradise to indwell us. This fragment of God knows the way back to perfection by the union of our will with the will of the fragment’s source. By a series of value choices based on our attunement with the Indweller, we eventually and irrevocably dedicate our eternal career to discerning and executing the Father’s good will. But we are indwelt by the Spirit of Truth, too––Jesus’ gift to humanity. This gift always points the way to God. And forget not our angels who always work for our progress in discerning and doing Father’s will.
Revealed truth, personally discovered truth, is the supreme delight of the human soul; it is the joint creation of the material mind and the indwelling spirit. The eternal salvation of this truth-discerning and beauty-loving soul is assured by that hunger and thirst for goodness which leads this mortal to develop a singleness of purpose to do the Father’s will, to find God and to become like him. UB 132:3.4
The central theme of The Urantia Book is finding the Father of love, learning, and eventually doing the divine will in perfection. In so doing we are becoming more like God. We do this because we come to realize that not yielding to the Father’s will leads to insanity, anarchy, and bedlam, both personal and social.
God is the one stabilizing element in the cosmos without whom we could not exist, much less reach for perfection of the doing of the divine will. Total rebellion against Father’s good will signals eventual and certain cessation. That which is unreal cannot find permanence in a perfecting universe. The logical, inevitable, and unavoidable consequence of rejecting the plan of life is death. Universal divine harmony is necessary, or God would not ask it of us. Enjoy the ride Agondonter, Father probably delights in our role at least as much as we do.
Maintaining personal integrity is part of discerning and doing the divine will. If we are honest, reliable, and disciplined within ourselves, we can also be trusted with Father’s greater powers and responsibilities. Integrity is associated with loyalty and a sense of responsibility to always live and spread truth, goodness, and beauty among our siblings and reflect it back to God. We are Father’s representatives, ambassadors, and children. And this honor comes with obligations, responsibilities, and cosmic education.
It is no simple matter discerning the divine will on a disordered, experimental, and twice-defaulted planet. There is no visible presence of the benign government of God on Urantia as there is on planets that have not suffered defaults. World wars have been fought over differing interpretations of the divine leadings in the human mind. Indeed, few wars are fought without inviting the blessing of God by each side. Leadings must be scrutinized and wisely evaluated in a culture whose children are brought up knowing but meager bits of truth, goodness, and beauty.
In attempting to do the Father’s perfect will, we might go the first mile of duty in caring for others. But duty is often associated with drudgery and unpleasantness. Doing the Father’s will is, more often than not, enjoyable—emotionally and spiritually satisfying. Dutiful training may have its place in education, but Father’s perfection of purpose evokes joyful and creative participation. Living the divine will, giving good service, is motivated not by duty but by the love of pleasing God and helping our cosmic family.
We need a great Father and a diverse family to work out the perfect will of God in time and eternity. Interaction with other ascenders is the wise policy of Paradise. It is the scheme of the cosmos that we acquire what we need by giving others what they need, even to perfection. In the end, we want to do Father’s bidding because we discover God loves us so profoundly, personally, and intimately that doing the divine will becomes not only our salvation, but our greatest desire, our fondest wish, our favorite pleasure, and our eternal motivation.
Verily, verily, I say to you, when the Father’s will is your law, you are hardly in the kingdom. But when the Father’s will becomes truly your will, then are you in very in the kingdom because the kindom has thereby become an established experience in you. When God’s will is your law, you are noble slave subjects; but when you believe in this new gospel of divine sonship, my Father’s will becomes your will, and you are elevated to the high position of the free children of God, liberated sons of the kingdom. UB 141:2.2
Jesus left for our use a versatile tool, a “golden rule.” If an ascender cannot discern the divine will any other way, then asking, ‘what would I do if the situation were reversed?’, may light the way. But this golden rule comes with caveats. It must be steeped in spirit-born wisdom and divine attunement in order to resolve the situation in a lasting way. The golden rule produces the most goodness, beauty, and truth when applied by God-centered children of faith. God’s goodness gives the universe a moral center and the golden rule supplies a divine standard of morality.
The highest morality you may achieve is knowing and doing God’s will. But the commonly accepted, earthly standard, of morality is not Father’s standard. We can best know true morality by knowing the God who lives and works for our enlightenment through our thoughts. The Thought Adjuster benignly adjusts our thinking toward the Divine Will, but only as much as we allow. The Adjuster first submits his will to ours, and by experience, love, and nurture, the reverse becomes true.
Father takes a risk each time freewill is bestowed on ascending creatures. So, God sends Sons like Jesus to establish the upper limits of truth, beauty, and goodness that may be expressed through human freewill. Jesus became the living will of God, in the flesh, even on a twice-defaulted world. Jesus’ transcendent example of finding and applying the Father’s will to perfection prepared the path for all others to find perfection. No creature can circumvent our Creator, nor would we want to. This explains why Jesus declared he is the living way. His Spirit of Truth knows the way.
Just before Jesus left Urantia he said:
And this Spirit of Truth which I will bestow upon you shall guide and comfort you and shall eventually lead you into all truth. UB 180:4.2
God’s perfect will is involved with what we do, but especially with our intentions. Father knows we are not perfect at this stage, so intentions become the yardstick of fulfilling the divine will. The old axiom that says the road to hell is paved with good intentions is wrong on two counts; there is no hell, and good intentions are the road to Paradise. Good intentions and imperfection combine to make errors, which eventuate in wisdom. We correct course from the hard lessons of mistakes made, from missing or misinterpreting the divine will. It is a beautiful response we make to Father’s challenge to perfect ourselves in time and space, come to know the fullness of truth.
If any man chooses to do the divine will, he shall know the way of truth. UB 102:1.1
The time/space universes are designed to create character, to develop in us Father’s values of goodness, the pleasures of beauty, and satisfactions of living truth. Doing the divine will always adds to our story, our values and character, at the same time giving us the joys of meaningful participation in universe affairs.
¶ Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and the Father’s Will
¶ Part Two of Three
The Urantia Book’s authors used the word combination truth, beauty, and goodness more than eighty times, from the Foreword to the last paragraph on the last page. Paper 56 has a whole section on this word trio. The authors did not simply pluck these three words out of our vocabulary and combine them. The values they represent have been discussed separately since the times of Plato (4th century B.C.), if not before. A fifteenth century Italian priest and philosopher, Marsilio Ficino, is credited with pulling the three together. They eventually acquired their own name: The Transcendentals. So named because they transcend all other values. More than once the authors equivalate truth, beauty, and goodness with love, God’s love. And more than ten times, in the eighty-plus truth, beauty, and goodness quotes, the authors refer to God’s will.
God is our Paradise Father and also our best friend. Friends don’t order one another around with unbending laws. They motivate them with familial love and attract them by example to the worthy service of spreading truth, beauty, and goodness. While love is always Father’s primary attribute, it is also the prime motivator. Practical rules often are required for the circumstances of complex living, but laws are never needed within a harmonious family. Love is essential to the outworking of God’s will at every level of personality intercourse. The highest teachings on spirit love come from applied goodness, living truth, and created beauty.
When we have, “eternally and unreservedly chosen to do the Father’s will,” then will we become one with the fragment of Father that indwells us. This choice signifies our union, our fusion, with the indwelling God for eternity. We do this because our love for God inspires us to attempt to please the one who loves us with overwhelming and “startling affection.”
The way to oneness, to fusion, with God is by living the truth, actually doing the will of God. That can be challenging but Father’s will is seldom a heavy load. It’s usually a divine delight, a joy of participation. Jesus taught:
The gospel yoke is easy and the burden of truth is light. UB 159:3.7
Doing God’s bidding may be the highest human virtue but, like worship, it is one of the most satisfying and rewarding experiences available to humans. Of all possible activities, doing the Father’s will is the only one that is truly and perpetually satisfying. From voluntary and spirited cooperation with the divine plan come service energy, our happiness, our wholeness, our physical, mental, and spiritual health, even our character, the accumulation of sublime values that are best expressed in the words, truth, beauty, goodness, and love.
God’s will is always true and good. Our living this goodness and truth serves the universe family because every good service rendered accrues to the good of all. But the will of the Father is not a prison sentence, a crushing burden or a Herculean task. Instead, it is the Father’s challenge to the enlightened children of time and space to seek personal perfection in their living expressions of beauty, truth, and goodness.
The will of God is divine truth, living love; therefore are the perfecting creations of the evolutionary universes characterized by goodness. UB 3:6.2
Should we count the cost of forfeiting our will for the divine will before committing to it for eternity? Rest assured it will cost you everything, but the reward is everything in return. Perhaps not in the order of our preference because Father wisely organizes the Universe, and that creates the need for patience, forbearance, and great perspective–wisdom. We will do and attain everything we want in time and eternity—if it is worth doing and having. The beautiful part of giving our will over to the Father is the spiritual fulfillment, the divine involvement.
When we dedicate our will to the doing of the divine will we still play, work (serve) and rest, but we now allow for the presence and will of God living in the center of our being, one helping us in decision making. Always does the higher personality inspire the lower by the benign power of love—living truth, beauty, goodness.
How do we dedicate our will to the divine will? The answer is inside us where the three personal representatives of the Paradise Trinity dwell. Real prayer is sincere communication with the Father, Son, and Spirit living in us, the Adjuster, the Spirit of Truth, and the seven Adjutants. From sincere and wise praying come answers. From worship comes intimacy with God and the knowing how to perform the divine will. The consequence of all our worship, prayer and doing God’s work is sublime creativity, more unity with Father’s original creative spirit.
When sincerity is deep enough, the human and divine wills can meet and agree. This sincerity comes from our prior choosing, wise praying, deep worship, and hard-won understanding, experience, and ever-growing capacity for spiritual truths. In substance Jesus said:
The will of God is the way of God, partnership with the choice of God in the face of any potential alternative. To do the will of God, therefore, is the progressive experience of becoming more and more like God, and God is the source and destiny of all that is good and beautiful and true. UB 130:2.7
The better we come to know the Father, the more we are overwhelmed with affection for this unimaginably majestic Being, who not only upholds the Cosmos and leads it by the sheer and sole power of love and goodness, but also seeks intimate friendship with every personal creature, including us! This kind of love and support compels us, at some point, to say with all our heart, “Use me Father as you will! It is your universe, and I am but one of your many children who wants to help you in all your good, beautiful, and true purposes. Thank you!”
We might well ask; what creates conflict between divine and human wills? There is no conflict of creature and Creator wills on Paradise and Havona, all is unity. Only where ignorance, stubbornness, and rebellion prevail is there error and broad deviation from the Divine Way. Wherever there is a lack of God’s truth and goodness, error, evil, even sin and iniquity, are possible. Under such conditions beauty is unlikely to blossom; it will remain a potential.
Error, evil, sin, and iniquity are all potential in time/space where unenlightened beings have relative freewill, but we learn best from the errors we make. Though errors are inevitable, evil, sin, and iniquity are not necessary for learning and spiritual progress. Their possibility is required to reflect the Divine Will by contrast. Humans require this contrast for value sorting and character-building. Creatures born on Paradise/Havona are inherently perfect reflectors and animators of the Father’s wishes. We require these perfect models living in the Central Shining, they provide the standards we ascend to. Havona is the existential paradigm of family perfection that sets the experiential goals and purposes for all. Havona natives are perfect and living examples of God’s will.
Doing God’s will is no more or less than striking harmony with Divinity. Jesus did it to perfection and we can, if not achieve perfection, at least aspire to it. Father’s all-wise, all-encompassing plan for endless universal expansion of the realities and values of truth, beauty, and goodness is perfect and all inclusive. But not one creature will be forced to comply with this plan to do Father’s will. Even if God has a monopoly on universe destiny and your experiences are essential for universe development, you will never be coerced into doing God’s will. Father leads by love, and no other pressure or force is needed to induce personal creatures to return it in service and worship–once you know that love.
An experience is good when it heightens the appreciation of beauty, augments the moral will, enhances the discernment of truth, enlarges the capacity to love and serve one’s fellows, exalts the spiritual ideals, and unifies the supreme human motives of time with the eternal plans of the indwelling Adjuster, all of which lead directly to an increased desire to do the Father’s will, thereby fostering the divine passion to find God and to be more like him. UB 132:2.5
The revelation that humans should endeavor to be Godlike is a new one that requires our utmost wisdom in knowing the difference between being Godlike and being God. Seeking and doing Father’s will makes us more and more like God. This is good for the body, mind, and soul because it strikes harmony with the source of goodness and wellness. Health and happiness are the side effects of divinely harmonious living, even when life is challenging. Jesus managed to smile at his mother as he hung on the cross.
¶ Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and God’s Will
¶ Part 3 of 3
God needs us and our experience. Through us Father wants to create a new and unique path that contributes to the actualization of the God of time and space, the Supreme Being. But will we join the work party? Will we join our will to God’s and dedicate our eternal existence to helping Father create this almighty mother of the evolving creatures of the Grand Universe? The Supreme is the personification of God’s will in time and space, made from the whole-cloth of ascender’s experiences in acquiring divine values–truth, goodness, and beauty.
The Father of All, by the divine will, is employing the universal family to reach the level of Supremacy. The Almighty Supreme will be the culmination of all time/space experience in the outworking of truth, goodness, and beauty to the point of perfection, the settling of the Grand Universe in “light and life.” This experiential God will be the living expression, the culmination of all worthy values of all creatures evolving in time and space, including us. But we will maintain our individual identity throughout. Our unique experience acquired in time and space is required to fulfill our final, personal destiny, our survival in eternity, but it is also required to fulfill God’s purpose, to create another God, one with a beginning but not an end.
How God can create a Supreme Being out of the collective experiences of time/space is a mystery, but the Supreme does give purpose to existence. This totalizing deity presence will not be the final act of the divine will, only for this age. Beyond the actualization of the Supreme, the stage is open to the greater mysteries of the Ultimate and the Absolute whose manifestation is set by the perfect will of the great God, the Father of Lights, “the First Source and Center.”
We lowly humans may struggle to accept and implement the Divine Will, but the focus of all higher reality is God’s will. In fact, the truest of all truths is Father’s living will. Absent an absolute-value endowed Universe with God at its center, we would be adrift, aimless with no standard of goodness, no anchor of truth, and no meaning to beauty–if such a useless universe could exist.
We live in a personal cosmos of the Father’s direction and watchcare. God’s will is the business of the entire universe and everyone is subject to this divine and benign organizing principle. To believe otherwise is untrue and unreal. The Father’s love is calling all who can adore and serve other persons, from Highest Divinity to lowest humanity, those with whom we share enduring life.
Our longest relationship, realized or not, has been with divinity living inside. From before birth the Divine Minister nursed us on mind, Michael fed us the Spirit of Truth, and when we were but a child, our Father filled us with his indwelling spirit, the mighty Adjuster.
The Adjuster bestowed upon man is, in the last analysis, impervious to evil and incapable of sin, but mortal mind can actually be twisted, distorted, and rendered evil and ugly by the sinful machinations of a perverse and self-seeking human will. Likewise can this mind be made noble, beautiful, true, and good–actually great–in accordance with the spirit-illuminated will of a God-knowing human being. UB 111:1.6
We humans have the choice of declaring that either our will is dominant or our Father’s. It’s the only true choice we have. If we repeatedly fail to make the choice for eternal life, mercy credits come into play. Even sin is allowed and forgiven until one final, conscious choice is made between our personal will and the divine, between truth and error, good and evil, ugliness and beauty. The prodigal sons and daughters of the world may not be perfect, but we find a righteous home in a good, true, and beautiful God. When we find God, we lose the taste for evil and sin.
The Master came to create in man a new spirit, a new will–to impart a new capacity for knowing the truth, experiencing compassion, and choosing goodness–the will to be in harmony with God’s will. UB 140:8.32
As we grow in experience with the presence of our Father, as we begin to comprehend God’s magnitude and personal indwelling, we will also begin to feel it an honor, a privilege, and a matchless opportunity to do the divine will. And to know and do the divine will, it is crucial that we understand God better.
The best way for us to see our Father’s nature is through the lenses of beauty, goodness, and truth. God’s will is the living of these three divine values. If we know and live them, we will be doing the Father’s will.
The Universal Father evidently wanted children who are born perfect, as with our Havona family, one billion perfect worlds inhabited by the models of perfection that we may ascend to. God also created children who achieve perfection by emulating the good illustration of Havona perfection and seeing the example of time/space truth revealers like Jesus.
As mortal man strives to do the will of God, these beings of the central universe live to gratify the ideals of the Paradise Trinity. In their very nature they are the will of God. Man rejoices in the goodness of God, Havoners exult in the divine beauty, while you both enjoy the ministry of the liberty of living truth. UB 14:4.13
In the eyes of the Father, we are cherished no more and no less than those perfect ones of Havona. The Father sees all creatures as having equal value. But we, as perfecting beings, must discover and do the divine will by understanding and inculcating the meanings and values of living truth, divine goodness, and cosmic beauty amid relative standards of earthly morality. The ultimate morality is devotion to cosmic outworking and divine bidding no matter what—eventually to perfection!
If harmony is the speech of Havona, then its language is the Father’s will. We eventually will, if we persevere, reach perfect harmony with God’s will. Someday we shall stand in the Paradise presence of the one whose perfect will we have mastered over vast stretches of time and space. The perfect will of the Father we will know in all its permutations—our harmonious spirit will find complete resonance with the personal universe through the avenue of divine contact.
To a Father who creates and bestows everything, there is but one meaningful gift we can give in return, one that God has no way of creating alone. That is the gift of our hearty and loving cooperation with the Divine Plan of eternal, infinite unfolding—even our experience.
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
At Michael’s inauguration as our new local universe sovereign, after his billion-year course of bestowing himself on seven diverse levels of creature existence, when he was being lauded all around, he stated simply that he was doing the Father’s will. We have an infallible guide in Michael, and a superlative example of living the divine will, even on a backward, retarded, evil-ridden world like Urantia.
Michael’s planet-hovering and indwelling presence since Pentecost, the Spirit of Truth, ever points the way to the Father’s will. When we do God’s will, we also foster fraternity because we are unified in the service of truth, goodness, and beauty. And, unrecognized by most of us, the Spirit of Truth assists in facilitating this loving contact between God’s children.
If my words abide in you and you are minded to do the will of my Father, then are you truly my disciples. You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. UB 162:7.2
God wants our voluntary and dedicated cooperation, wants our freewill to become the same as the divine will. It is much about selflessness. Will we serve ourselves or the Self? And if we do serve God, are we not also serving ourselves? We have been informed, and we can know by observation, that the good of one redounds to the good of all.
The coming of the Spirit of Truth purifies the human heart and leads the recipient to formulate a life purpose single to the will of God and the welfare of men. UB 194:3.19
We have a perfect guide in the Spirit of Truth, and we have a perfect goal, therefore is the way open to Paradise. These are ancient trails to the divine abode that we now walk. All true paths lead to God even if no one travels to Paradise by quite the same route. And all who study them do learn that Father’s truth, goodness, and beauty are the roadmaps to knowing the divine character, nature, and will.
We must discover the primacy of the Father’s will in our inner life in order to seize our role and thereafter make decisions based in God’s truth, goodness, and beauty—decisions that assure our soul’s survival. God could exist forever without us, even though we cannot live and love even a minute without God. There is a plan that involves every soul who will agree to cooperate with God in the outworking of the divine purpose, the actualization of the Supreme, the Ultimate, and eventually, the Absolute.
I declare that the kingdom of heaven is the realization and acknowledgment of God’s rule within the hearts of men. UB 141:2.1
Notes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentals