© 1985 Jeff Wattles, Kathleen A. Friedel
© 1985 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
“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.” (UB 2:7.10) What implications does this passage carry? What questions does it raise?
The religious challenge. What a surprise to propose this one as primary! What would you have said if you had been asked what the main religious challenge of this age is? Most religionists would come up with very different answers, Let us not hurridly nod our agreement with the text and quickly pass on to the next edifying line. In order to discover whether we agree with the author, we must investigate.
The religious challenge. We might have been less shocked if the author had called this the intellectual or philosophic challenge of the age. I can only surmise that progress on this project is important for preachers and religious teachers during and after the spiritual renaissance.
—Jeffrey Wattles
Concord, California
The following was a talk given at the 1985 Intensive Studiy Seminar, Lake Forest, Illinois.
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Why “partnership”? Because it seems to me that this concept goes a long way toward explaining why we have this revelation-even why it begins with the Universal Father!
After all, how does one explain why we have this new revelation? One would think — and certainly Christians, for example, think — that the incarnation and revelation two thousand years ago of the Creator Son himself as Jesus of Nazareth would be for all time; that it could not be improved upon — so to speak! Yet here we have The URANTIA Book described in Paper 92 as the fifth revelation of epochal significance.
—Kathleen A. Friedel
Toledo, Ohio
Many thanks to everyone who wrote in response to the questions we’ve posed in the past few issues. Out of all the material we received, the lead article for this issue was selected for publication. Although space limitations preclude our printing every contribution, it’s often the case that the act of organizing one’s thinking and expressing it in writing provides a great sense of accomplishment and a strengthened perspective on the concern that has been addressed.
This by no means concludes our intention to publish work that focuses on the questions we’ve raised. If you’ve been taking your time to carefully consider your response, please go ahead and put it in writing and send it to The Journal. Just to give you something else to think about, here’s one more question, this time from the following quote in Paper 4.
“The infinite goodness of the Father is beyond the comprehension of the finite mind of time; hence must there always be afforded a contrast with comparative evil (not sin ) for the effective exhibition of all phases of relative goodness. Perfection of divine goodness can be discerned by mortal imperfection of insight only because it stands in contrastive association with relative imperfection in the relationships of time and matter in the motions of space.” (UB 4:3.6)
Question
The nature of evil and the concern about its reality is a major theological question today. Based on understandings gleaned from The URANTIA Book, why do you think bad things happen to good people?
“The characteristic difference between evolved and revealed religion is a new quality of divine wisdom which is added to purely experiential human wisdom.” (UB 100:6.9)