© 1980 Grace E. Stephens, Charles Laurence Olivea
© 1980 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
Youth seeks recognition. Maturity tends to change the individual’s perspective with a leavening of the importance of self.
The URANTIA Book honors those who serve quietly behind the scenes. We are told that a reservist is chosen because of his “… willingness to serve without human recognition and rewards.” (UB 114:7.5)
URANTIA Brotherhood seems to be entering a transition period when the old is giving way to the new. Let me admonish those to whom we are entrusting the safekeeping of our revelation not to reject the historic leadership of the many dedicated men and women of the past who have done so much in contributing to the organization of the Brotherhood and have given their lives to the dissemination of these teachings.
— Grace E. Stephens
Downer’s Grove, Illinois
Editors note: Grace Stephens graduated to the Mansion Worlds in January, this year.
The following article will also be appearing in The CIRCLES.
At some unimaginable level of reality totality, God exists alone — undifferentiated and beyond the need to conceive of unity. This is the static level wherein God is wholly self-contained and self-existent. However, within this static totality, there also must be present — and identical in fact and truth — absolute, infinite diversity, and absolute, eternal unity. Always, at this level of God’s unfathomable existence, must infinite diversity be eternally unified, And yet, somehow, such lowly will creatures as Urantian mortals have become a conscious part of God’s majestic exploration of his infinity.
As an absolutely unique personality existence, each mortal is an expression of God’s diversity. And, consequently, each mortal is charged with the awesome responsibility to aid in the maintenance of absolute, universal unity by choosing to unify his mortal portion of infinity. And this process, described in many different ways in The URANTIA Book, and experienced differentially by each mortal, is the doing of the Father’s will, and is a part of the eternal process of becoming perfect as is the Father.
—Anonymous
Introduction
This essay has a two-fold purpose: to suggest an explanation why Deity chooses to differentiate the mortal planetary races by color and endowment; and to offer some ideas on today’s perplexing issues of social justice, genetic control, and racism on Urantia.
Part 1
In attempting to understand the concept of race in The URANTIA Book, I found it necessary to adopt the view that “Finite origins are helpful, but only divine causes reveal final effects. Eternal ends are not shown in time beginnings.” (UB 19:1.11) It is helpful to have a Life Carrier’s listing of some of the reasons for racial differences: variety for natural selection; interbreeding of diverse, but superior inheritance factors; competitive interracial development; variation in racial status provides the opportunity for developing tolerance; and, encouraging individual races to first grow in numbers and come to maturity before worldwide homogeneous racial mixing. (UB 64:6.31-35) While these reasons do describe something important about the process of racial evolution in the human condition, they do not explain how the plan for multiple evolutionary races of color relates to God and his cosmic design of the universe.
— Charles Laurence Olivea
Watertown, Connecticut
“Truth, beauty, and goodness are divine realities, and as man ascends the scale of spiritual living, these supreme qualities of the Eternal become increasingly co-ordinated and unified in God, who is love.” (UB 2:7.10)