© 2019 Stephen Sawyer
© 2019 The Urantia Book Fellowship
| Office Report | Fall 2019 Issue — Index | First Meeting of the Urantia Uganda August 2020 Planning Committee |
by Stephen Sawyer
Why do you suppose that we are so enticed and seduced into wanting to foreknow the future?
The seduction comes at us from every angle.
Politicians warn us about the future of our homes, healthcare, jobs, and freedom if we don’t vote right. Pharmaceutical companies warn us that it is worth the risk to take their FDA approved drug which will kill several people who take the drug on the recommendation of those who practice medicine. Historians warn us that if we don’t know the past we are doomed to repeat it in the future. Diet commercials warn us that if we want to be happy we will take control of our future and lose weight with their meals, supplements, or programs. Pastors warn us that our eternal future is in jeopardy if we don’t “toe the line” according to their denominational doctrine.
And all around us insurance salesmen say, “God forbid anything should happen.”
This outrageous fear of our absolutely uncertain future has become the most powerfully subtle addiction ever carried on the back of humanity and we have borne it for so long that we assume it is a limp we were born with.
We have become so adept at verbal “slight of hand” that we don’t recognize the card being palmed behind every rationalization is nothing but fear of the unknown.
Time should be a flower but we have made it a circus.
Rather than watching our parents age gracefully, as they approach the end of their season on earth, we have been selling happiness behind the scalpel of plastic surgery–to look younger for a few more years, to be thinner without the sweat, to look like someone famous because we aren’t good enough as we are. I prefer to use the original phrase “plastic” over “cosmetic” because it is plastic. I am not saying that it is wrong; I just think it should be recognized as a plastic solution to a timeless problem.
It is absolutely amazing that we tie happiness to temporal things. I like “things” but I know they won’t make me happy. I like the buzz of a good distraction whether it is a vacation or a martini but I know it won’t make me happy either. And that elusive happiness is inextricably tied into our experience with the unknown. The future…
If it weren’t for all of the clowns we might recognize the circus for what it really is. If it weren’t for the ferocious lions and tigers and bears, oh my, we might recognize our common biological need for an adrenaline rush. If it weren’t for the bare-chested muscular men or scantily clad gorgeous women performing remarkable skill upon the trapeze we could see our lust for what it is.
We are just people. But we were animals first. Animals braced to fight for survival in a world of danger and obsessed with manufacturing false survival skills, in the middle of a controlled environmental experiment that we call our civilization, our culture, our society, and our brief moments through the passage of time. We need the uncertainty of life. We crave the unknown but only in a controlled environment where we know the tiger could eat the tamer but probably won’t. We watch death defying feats in the air, underwater, and on the ground. And the more likely someone will get maimed or killed, the more we will likely pay for the ticket.
Apparently there is a powerful force running in our veins that needs what we are being told is not good for us. We need uncertainty and yet we pay insurance companies to protect us from it. We don’t embrace the future because we are terrified of it. The unknown has gripped the imagination of every human that has ever been born and ever will be born so why is it not our friend rather than our enemy? Why aren’t we embracing the unknown as the great adventure? Why aren’t we making wrinkles from smiling at the unknown rather than the frown lines made from the very fear of it?
But who can blame us for the panic. We have been told about the “other side” but we’ve never had any proof. And yet we flock to those who say they’ve seen it. We pay good money to those who swear they’ve been to heaven and back or hell and back, depending on which circus you’ve attended.
The unknown must be embraced joyfully if we are to transform the circus into a flower. Clearly some people prefer the circus with its colorful distractions to the people who find inner happiness watching the spring buds break through the earth, grow and blossom, wither and slowly die. Very few people who attend the circus stay for the end. Leaving after the final bow is not the end. The end is when the tents are taken down, and the circus leaves town.
In short, it could be argued that acknowledging the end is the beginning of accepting the unknown. And we can only succeed in any undertaking if we are first willing to fail.
All in all, we are doing great as the only animals on the planet who have foreknowledge of death. If you think humans deal with death poorly, try to imagine a zebra in Africa pondering impending death without an opposable thumb(1). It’s pretty tough to build a tree house above the Serengeti plain with hooves.
Consider some of our triumphant human attributes like faith, courage, loyalty, unselfishness, and hope.
Faith cannot be experienced without embracing the unknown, all the while believing in more than we can know.
Courage is born only from hardship and disappointments that place us in a moment in time where we must make the ultimate decisions and perhaps pay the ultimate price.
Loyalty springs from the soil of potential betrayal and once again must be chosen in contrast.
Hope can be grown only in the presence of a sublime trust that oversees the uncertainties of life.
And unselfishness can only be chosen as an expression of loving kindness in stark contrast to mankind’s desperate clutching need for recognition and honor.
Whence comes all that we admire but from the uncertainties of the unknown? Men and women foolishly throw grappling hooks in an attempt to catch the sky. What they claim as their reward is the debris that sticks to the hook as they struggle to pull it back through the sod and asphalt of this uncertain life.
Live on purpose.
Live to serve and not to be served.
Live to love and not to be loved.
Live to give and not to be given to.
The torn fragments of the flower that chance to remain upon the grappling hook are not unlike the flowers that are trampled underfoot while racing to be entertained by the clowns.
Even in this madness, the ringmaster in the circus of time is God just as He is the God that waters the flower of time. Both experiences in time are real inasmuch as they are both limited by a mind that cannot comprehend the plans of a timeless God. It is a merciful condescension for God to still be available to children who scream for the circus. And however more God-like the flower might seem, God loves all of us the same.
The question then is whether you want your experience in time be like a flower or a circus.
Time could be a flower unless you really need a circus.
(1) If a Zebra was being chased…with an opposable thumb he could theoretically build a tree house rather than be destroyed by a pack of lions.
The opposable thumb, like the hyoid bone in our throats which help us create the sounds of communicated language, is uniquely human. We can build a tree house high above predators. The upright bipedal form allows for everything which is the precursor for becoming “self-aware” which is necessary to imagine the unknown, death prior to its arrival, and ultimately God.
(The hyoid bone is a horseshoe shaped bone found in the neck which protects the esophagus and facilitates a wide range of muscle activity required for speaking and swallowing.)
| Office Report | Fall 2019 Issue — Index | First Meeting of the Urantia Uganda August 2020 Planning Committee |