© 1959 William S. Sadler
© 1961 Urantia Foundation
Though it is hardly proper to speak of Jesus as a sacrificer, a ransomer, or a redeemer, it is wholly correct to refer to him as a savior. UB 188:4.7
Reality, as comprehended by finite beings, is .partial, relative, and shadowy. UB 0:3.20
Reality differentially actualizes on diverse universe levels; reality originates in and by the infinite volition of the Universal Father and is realizable in three primal phases on many different levels of universe actualization:
- Undeified reality
- Deified reality
- Interassociated reality UB 0:4.1-4
Reason is the method of science; faith is the method of religion; logic is the attempted technique of philosophy. UB 101:2.2
Reason, through the study of science, may lead back through nature to a First Cause, but it requires religious faith to transform the First Cause of science into a God of salvation; and revelation is further required for the validation of such a faith, such spiritual insight. UB 101:2.3
Reason is the proof of science, faith the proof of religion, logic the proof of philosophy, but revelation is validated only by human experience. UB 101:2.8
Reason is the understanding technique of the sciences: faith is the insight technique of religions mota is the technique of the morontia level. UB 103:6.7
Reason is the act of recognizing the conclusions of consciousness with regard to the experience in and with the physical world of energy and matter. UB 103:7.13
The directors of the Superuniverse minor sectors. UB 15:10.15
Recognition is the intellectual process of fitting the sensory impressions received from the external world into the memory patterns of the individual. UB 111:4.1
Though it is hardly proper to speak of Jesus as a sacrificer, a ransomer, or a redeemer, it is wholly correct to refer to him as a savior. He forever made the way of salvation (survival) more clear and certain; he did better and, more surely show the way of salvation for all the mortals of all the worlds of the universe of Nebadon. UB 188:4.7
This is the phenomenon of universe reflectivity, that unique and inexplicable power to see, hear, sense, and know all things as they transpire throughout a superuniverse, and to focalize, by reflectivity, all this information and knowledge at any desired point. UB 9:7.1
Reflectivity appears to be omniscience within the limits of the experiential finite and may represent the emergence of the presence-consciousness of the Supreme Being. UB 9:7.5
The religion of Jesus is salvation from self, deliverance from the evils of creature isolation in time and in eternity. UB 5:4.5
Religion is not grounded in the facts of science, the obligations of society, the assumptions of philosophy, or the implied duties of morality. Religion is an independent realm of human response to life situations and is unfailingly exhibited at all stages of human development which are postmoral Religion may permeate all four levels of the realization of values and the enjoyment of universe fellowship: the physical or material level of self-preservation; the social or emotional level of fellowships the moral or duty level of reason; the spiritual level of the consciousness of universe fellowship through divine worship. UB 5:5.2
Religion fostered civilization and provided societal continuity; it has been the moral police force of all time. Religion provided that human discipline and self-control which made wisdom possible. Religion is the efficient scourge of evolution which ruthlessly drives indolent and suffering humanity from its natural state of intellectual inertia forward and upward to the higher levels of reason and wisdom UB 92:3.9
Religion cannot be bestowed, received, loaned, learned, or lost. It is a personal experience which grows proportionally to the growing quest for final values. UB 100:1.7
Revealed religion is the unifying element of human existence. Revelation unifies history, co-ordinates geology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, and psychology. UB 102:4.6
True religion has nothing to do with alleged miracles, and never does revealed religion point to miracles as proof of authority. Religion is ever and always rooted and grounded in personal experience. UB 102:8.7
Religion is designed to change man’s environment, but much of the religion found among mortals today has become helpless to do this. Environment has all too often mastered religion.
Remember that in the religion of all ages the experience which is paramount is the feeling regarding moral values and social meanings, not the thinking regarding theologic dogmas or philosophic theories.Religion evolves favorably as the element of magic is replaced by the concept of morals. UB 103:3.3-4
The relation between the creature and the Creator is a living experience, a dynamic religious faith, which is not subject to precise definition. To isolate part of life and call it religion is to disintegrate life and to distort religion. And this is just why the God of worship claims all allegiance or none. UB 102:6.1
When certain vacillating and timid mortals attempt to escape from the incessant pressure of evolutionary life, religion, as they conceive it, seems to present the nearest refuge, the best avenue of escape. But it is the mission of religion to prepare man for bravely, even heroically, facing the vicissitudes of life. Religion is evolutionary man’s supreme endowment, the one thing which enables him to carry on and “endure as seeing Him who is invisible.” UB 102:2.8
Religion becomes the avenue of man’s escape from the material limitations of the temporal and natural world to the supernal realities of the eternal and spiritual world by and through the technique of salvation, the progressive morontia transformation. UB 101:9.9
Religion is not a specific function of life; rather is it a mode of living. True religion is a wholehearted devotion to some reality which the religionist deems to be of supreme value to himself and for all mankind. And the outstanding characteristics of all religions are: unquestioning loyalty and wholehearted devotion to supreme values. UB 100:6.1
Religion,as a human experience, ranges from the primitive fear slavery of the evolving savage up to the sublime and magnificent faith liberty of those civilized mortals who are superbly conscious of sonship with the eternal God. UB 101:0.1
Religion, the conviction-faith of the personality, can always triumph over the superficially contradictory logic of despair born in the unbelieving material mind. There really is a true and genuine inner voice, that “true light which lights every man who comes into the world.” . . . Religion is faith, trust, and assurance. UB 101:0.3
Religion is the mighty lever that lifts civilization from chaos, but it is powerless apart from the fulcrum of sound and normal mind resting securely on sound and normal heredity. UB 70:8.18
True religion is a meaningful way of living dynamically face to face with the commonplace realities of everyday life. But if religion is to stimulate individual development of character and augment integration of personality, it must not be standardized. If it is to stimulate evaluation of experience and serve as a value-lure, it must not be stereotyped. If religion is to promote supreme loyalties, it must not be formalized. UB 99:4.3
Religion is not a technique for attaining a static and blissful peace of mind; it is an impulse for organizing the soul for dynamic service. It is the enlistment of the totality of selfhood in the loyal service of loving God and serving man. Religion pays any price essential to the attainment of the supreme goal, the eternal prize. UB 100:3.1
But true religion is a living love, a life of service. The religionist’s detachment from much that is purely temporal and trivial never leads to social isolation, and it should not destroy the sense of humor. Genuine religion takes nothing away from human existence, but it does add new meanings to all of life; it generates new types of enthusiasm, zeal, and courage. It may even engender the spirit of the crusader, which is more than dangerous if not controlled by spiritual insight and loyal devotion to the commonplace social obligations of human loyalties. UB 100:6.5
Religion is, rather, a profoundly deep and actual experience of spiritual communion with the spirit influences resident within the human mind, and as far as such an experience if definable in terms of psychology, it is simply the experience of experiencing the reality of believing in God as the reality of such a purely personal experience. UB 101:1.4
Religion effectually cures man’s sense of idealistic isolation or spiritual loneliness; it enfranchises the believer as a son of God, a citizen at a new and meaningful universe. UB 101:10.7
True religion is to know God as your Father and man as your brother. Religion is not a slavish belief in threats of punishment or magical promises of future mystical regards. UB 99:5.2
Religion inspires man to live courageously and joyfully on the face of the earth; it joins patience with passion, insight to zeal, sympathy with power, and ideals with energy. UB 99:7.3
Religion consists not in theologic propositions but in spiritual insight and the sublimity of the souls trust. UB 101:2.13
True religion is not a system of philosophic belief which can be reasoned out and substantiated by natural proofs, neither is it a fantastic and mystic experience of indescribable feelings of ecstasy which can be enjoyed only by the romantic devotees of mysticism. Religion is not the product of reason, but viewed from within, it is altogether reasonable. Religion is not derived from the logic of human philosophy, but as a mortal experience it is altogether logical. Religion is the experiencing of divinity in the consciousness of a moral being of evolutionary origins it represents true experience with eternal realities in time, the realization of spiritual satisfactions while yet in the flesh. UB 101:1.1
True religion is that sublime and profound conviction within the soul which compellingly admonishes man that it would be wrong for him not to believe in those morontial realities which constitute his highest ethical and moral concepts, his highest interpretation of life’s greatest values and the universe’s deepest realities. And such a religion is simply the experience of yielding intellectual loyalty to the highest dictates of spiritual consciousness. UB 101:9.3
Religion is man’s supreme experience in the mortal nature but finite language makes it forever impossible for theology ever adequately to depict real religious experience. UB 196:3.28
Religion is the revelation to man of his divine and eternal destiny. UB 195:5.3
Religion is designed to find those values in the universe which call forth faith, trust, and assurance; religion culminates in worship. Religion discovers for the soul those supreme values which are in contrast with the relative values discovered by the mind. Such superhuman insight can be had only through genuine religious experience. UB 195:5.8
This is the essence of true religion: that you love your neighbor as yourself. UB 180:5.7
Religion is the exclusively spiritual experience of the evolving immortal soul of the God-knowing man, but moral power and spiritual energy are mighty forces which may be utilized in dealing with difficult social situations and in solving intricate economic problems. These moral and spiritual endowments make all levels of human living richer and more meaningful. UB 156:5.10
True religion is the act of an individual soul in its self-conscious relations with the Creator; organized religion is mans attempt to socialize the worship of individual religionists. UB 143:7.2
Religion is a revelation to man’s soul dealing with spiritual realities which the mind alone could never fully discover or fully fathom. UB 146:3.1
Religion reaches out for undiscovered ideals, unexplored realities, superhuman values, divine wisdom, and true spirit attainment. True religion does all this; all other beliefs are not worthy of the name. UB 160:5.5
And when he said “Resist not evil,” he later explained that he did not mean to condone sin or to counsel fraternity with Iniquity. He Intended the more to teach forgiveness, to “resist not evil treatment of one’s personality, evil Injury to one’s feelings of personal dignity.” UB 141:3.8
The technique of justice demands that personal or group guardians shall respond to the dispensational roll call in behalf of all nonsurviving personalities. The Adjusters of such nonsurvivors do not return, and when the rolls are called, the seraphim respond, but the Adjusters make no answer. This constitutes the “resurrection of the unjust,” in reality the formal recognition of the cessation of creature existence. This roll call of justice always immediately follows the roll call of mercy, the resurrection of the sleeping survivors. UB 113:6.8
Rest is of a sevenfold nature; There is the rest of sleep and of play in the lower life orders. Discovery in the higher beings, and worship in the highest type of spirit personality. There is also the normal rest of energy intake, the recharging of beings with physical or with spiritual energy. And then there is the transit sleep, the unconsicous slumber when enseraphimed, and when in passage from one sphere to another. Entirely different from all of these is the deep sleep of metamorphosis, the transition rest from one stage of being to another, from one life to another, from one state of existence to another, the sleep which ever attends transition from actual universe status in contrast to evolution through various stages of any one status. UB 27:1.2
Reason is the method of science; faith is the method of religion; logic is the attempted technique of philosophy. Revelation compensates for the absence of the morontia viewpoint by providing a technique for achieving unity in the comprehension of the reality and relationships of matter and spirit by the mediation of mind. And true revelation never renders science unnatural, religion unreasonable, or philosophy illogical. UB 101:2.2
Faith reveals God in the soul. Revelation, the substitute for morontia insight on an evolutionary world, enables man to see the same God in nature that faith exhibits in his soul. Thus does revelation successfully bridge the gulf between the material and the spiritual, even between the creature and the Creator, between man and God. UB 101:2.10
Revelation as an epochal phenomenon is periodic; as a personal human experience it is continuous. UB 101:2.12
Revelation is a technique whereby ages upon ages of time are saved in the necessary work of sorting and sifting the errors of evolution from the truths of spirit acquirement. UB 101:5.1
Revelation liberates men and starts them out on the eternal adventure.
Science sorts men; religion loves men, even as yourself; wisdom does justice to differing men; but revelation glorifies man and discloses his capacity for partnership with God.
Science vainly strives to create the brotherhood of culture; religion brings into being the brotherhood of the spirit. Philosophy strives for the brotherhood of wisdom; revelation portrays the eternal brotherhood, the Paradise Corps of the Finality.
Knowledge yields pride in the fact of personality; widsom is the consciousness of the meaning of personality; religion is the experience of cognizance of the value of personality; revelation is the assurance of personality survival. UB 102:3.6
Revealed religion is the unifying element of human existence. Revelation unifies history, co-ordinates geology astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, and psychology. Spiritual experience is the real soul of man’s cosmos. UB 102:4.6-9
Hate is the shadow of fear; revenge the mask of cowardice. UB 145:3.4
Virtue is volitional with personality; Righteousness is not automatic in freewill creatures. UB 21:3.14
When rights are old beyond knowledge of origin, they are often called natural rights. But human rights are not really naturals they are entirely social. They are relative and ever changing, being no more than the rules of the game—recognized adjustments of relations governing the ever-changing phenomena of human competition.
What may be regarded as right in one age may not be so regarded in another.
. . .
The weak and inferior have always contended for equal rights; they have always insisted that the state compel the strong and superior to supply their wants and otherwise make good those deficiencies which all too often are the natural result of their own indifference and indolence.Society cannot offer equal rights to all, but it can promise to administer the varying rights of each with fairness and equity. UB 70:9.13-16
The essence of the ritual is the perfection of its performance; among savages it must be practiced with exact precision.
Ritual is the technique of sanctifying custom; ritual creates and perpetuates myths as well as contributing to the preservation of social and religious customs. Again, ritual itself has been fathered by myths. Rituals are often at first social, later becoming economic and finally acquiring the sanctity and dignity of religious ceremonial. Ritual may be personal or group in practice—or both—as illustrated by prayer, dancing, and drama. UB 90:5.1-2