688 lines
41 KiB
Plaintext
688 lines
41 KiB
Plaintext
Urantia Book Paper 102 The Foundations Of Religious Faith
|
||
SPIRITWEB ORG, PROMOTING SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS ON THE INTERNET.
|
||
|
||
Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
|
||
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
|
||
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
|
||
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
|
||
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
|
||
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
|
||
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
|
||
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
|
||
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
|
||
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
|
||
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
|
||
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
|
||
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
|
||
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
|
||
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
|
||
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
|
||
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
|
||
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
|
||
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
|
||
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
|
||
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
|
||
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
|
||
...
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
Paper 102 The Foundations Of Religious Faith
|
||
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
Introduction
|
||
|
||
TO THE unbelieving materialist, man is simply an evolutionary accident. His
|
||
hopes of survival are strung on a figment of mortal imagination; his fears,
|
||
loves, longings, and beliefs are but the reaction of the incidental
|
||
juxtaposition of certain lifeless atoms of matter. No display of energy nor
|
||
expression of trust can carry him beyond the grave. The devotional labors and
|
||
inspirational genius of the best of men are doomed to be extinguished by death,
|
||
the long and lonely night of eternal oblivion and soul extinction. Nameless
|
||
despair is man's only reward for living and toiling under the temporal sun of
|
||
mortal existence. Each day of life slowly and surely tightens the grasp of a
|
||
pitiless doom which a hostile and relentless universe of matter has decreed
|
||
shall be the crowning insult to everything in human desire which is beautiful,
|
||
noble, lofty, and good.
|
||
|
||
But such is not man's end and eternal destiny; such a vision is but the cry of
|
||
despair uttered by some wandering soul who has become lost in spiritual
|
||
darkness, and who bravely struggles on in the face of the mechanistic
|
||
sophistries of a material philosophy, blinded by the confusion and distortion
|
||
of a complex learning. And all this doom of darkness and all this destiny of
|
||
despair are forever dispelled by one brave stretch of faith on the part of the
|
||
most humble and unlearned of God's children on earth.
|
||
|
||
This saving faith has its birth in the human heart when the moral consciousness
|
||
of man realizes that human values may be translated in mortal experience from
|
||
the material to the spiritual, from the human to the divine, from time to
|
||
eternity.
|
||
|
||
1. ASSURANCES OF FAITH
|
||
|
||
The work of the Thought Adjuster constitutes the explanation of the translation
|
||
of man's primitive and evolutionary sense of duty into that higher and more
|
||
certain faith in the eternal realities of revelation. There must be perfection
|
||
hunger in man's heart to insure capacity for comprehending the faith paths to
|
||
supreme attainment. If any man chooses to do the divine will, he shall know the
|
||
way of truth. It is literally true, "Human things must be known in order to be
|
||
loved, but divine things must be loved in order to be known." But honest doubts
|
||
and sincere questionings are not sin; such attitudes merely spell delay in the
|
||
progressive journey toward perfection attainment. Childlike trust secures man's
|
||
entrance into the kingdom of heavenly ascent, but progress is wholly dependent
|
||
on the vigorous exercise of the robust and confident faith of the full-grown
|
||
man.
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1119
|
||
|
||
The reason of science is based on the observable facts of time; the faith of
|
||
religion argues from the spirit program of eternity. What knowledge and reason
|
||
cannot do for us, true wisdom admonishes us to allow faith to accomplish
|
||
through religious insight and spiritual transformation.
|
||
|
||
Owing to the isolation of rebellion, the revelation of truth on Urantia has all
|
||
too often been mixed up with the statements of partial and transient
|
||
cosmologies. Truth remains unchanged from generation to generation, but the
|
||
associated teachings about the physical world vary from day to day and from
|
||
year to year. Eternal truth should not be slighted because it chances to be
|
||
found in company with obsolete ideas regarding the material world. The more of
|
||
science you know, the less sure you can be; the more of religion you have, the
|
||
more certain you are.
|
||
|
||
The certainties of science proceed entirely from the intellect; the certitudes
|
||
of religion spring from the very foundations of the entire personality. Science
|
||
appeals to the understanding of the mind; religion appeals to the loyalty and
|
||
devotion of the body, mind, and spirit, even to the whole personality.
|
||
|
||
God is so all real and absolute that no material sign of proof or no
|
||
demonstration of so-called miracle may be offered in testimony of his reality.
|
||
Always will we know him because we trust him, and our belief in him is wholly
|
||
based on our personal participation in the divine manifestations of his
|
||
infinite reality.
|
||
|
||
The indwelling Thought Adjuster unfailingly arouses in man's soul a true and
|
||
searching hunger for perfection together with a far-reaching curiosity which
|
||
can be adequately satisfied only by communion with God, the divine source of
|
||
that Adjuster. The hungry soul of man refuses to be satisfied with anything
|
||
less than the personal realization of the living God. Whatever more God may be
|
||
than a high and perfect moral personality, he cannot, in our hungry and finite
|
||
concept, be anything less.
|
||
|
||
2. RELIGION AND REALITY
|
||
|
||
Observing minds and discriminating souls know religion when they find it in the
|
||
lives of their fellows. Religion requires no definition; we all know its
|
||
social, intellectual, moral, and spiritual fruits. And this all grows out of
|
||
the fact that religion is the property of the human race; it is not a child of
|
||
culture. True, one's perception of religion is still human and therefore
|
||
subject to the bondage of ignorance, the slavery of superstition, the
|
||
deceptions of sophistication, and the delusions of false philosophy.
|
||
|
||
One of the characteristic peculiarities of genuine religious assurance is that,
|
||
notwithstanding the absoluteness of its affirmations and the stanchness of its
|
||
attitude, the spirit of its expression is so poised and tempered that it never
|
||
conveys the slightest impression of self-assertion or egoistic exaltation. The
|
||
wisdom of religious experience is something of a paradox in that it is both
|
||
humanly original and Adjuster derivative. Religious force is not the product of
|
||
the individual's personal prerogatives but rather the outworking of that
|
||
sublime partnership of man and the everlasting source of all wisdom. Thus do
|
||
the words and acts of true and undefiled religion become compellingly
|
||
authoritative for all enlightened mortals.
|
||
|
||
It is difficult to identify and analyze the factors of a religious experience,
|
||
but it is not difficult to observe that such religious practitioners live and
|
||
carry
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1120
|
||
|
||
on as if already in the presence of the Eternal. Believers react to this
|
||
temporal life as if immortality already were within their grasp. In the lives
|
||
of such mortals there is a valid originality and a spontaneity of expression
|
||
that forever segregate them from those of their fellows who have imbibed only
|
||
the wisdom of the world. Religionists seem to live in effective emancipation
|
||
from harrying haste and the painful stress of the vicissitudes inherent in the
|
||
temporal currents of time; they exhibit a stabilization of personality and a
|
||
tranquillity of character not explained by the laws of physiology, psychology,
|
||
and sociology.
|
||
|
||
Time is an invariable element in the attainment of knowledge; religion makes
|
||
its endowments immediately available, albeit there is the important factor of
|
||
growth in grace, definite advancement in all phases of religious experience.
|
||
Knowledge is an eternal quest; always are you learning, but never are you able
|
||
to arrive at the full knowledge of absolute truth. In knowledge alone there can
|
||
never be absolute certainty, only increasing probability of approximation; but
|
||
the religious soul of spiritual illumination knows, and knows now. And yet this
|
||
profound and positive certitude does not lead such a sound-minded religionist
|
||
to take any less interest in the ups and downs of the progress of human wisdom,
|
||
which is bound up on its material end with the developments of slow-moving
|
||
science.
|
||
|
||
Even the discoveries of science are not truly real in the consciousness of
|
||
human experience until they are unraveled and correlated, until their relevant
|
||
facts actually become meaning through encircuitment in the thought streams of
|
||
mind. Mortal man views even his physical environment from the mind level, from
|
||
the perspective of its psychological registry. It is not, therefore, strange
|
||
that man should place a highly unified interpretation upon the universe and
|
||
then seek to identify this energy unity of his science with the spirit unity of
|
||
his religious experience. Mind is unity; mortal consciousness lives on the mind
|
||
level and perceives the universal realities through the eyes of the mind
|
||
endowment. The mind perspective will not yield the existential unity of the
|
||
source of reality, the First Source and Center, but it can and sometime will
|
||
portray to man the experiential synthesis of energy, mind, and spirit in and as
|
||
the Supreme Being. But mind can never succeed in this unification of the
|
||
diversity of reality unless such mind is firmly aware of material things,
|
||
intellectual meanings, and spiritual values; only in the harmony of the
|
||
triunity of functional reality is there unity, and only in unity is there the
|
||
personality satisfaction of the realization of cosmic constancy and
|
||
consistency.
|
||
|
||
Unity is best found in human experience through philosophy. And while the body
|
||
of philosophic thought must ever be founded on material facts, the soul and
|
||
energy of true philosophic dynamics is mortal spiritual insight.
|
||
|
||
Evolutionary man does not naturally relish hard work. To keep pace in his life
|
||
experience with the impelling demands and the compelling urges of a growing
|
||
religious experience means incessant activity in spiritual growth, intellectual
|
||
expansion, factual enlargement, and social service. There is no real religion
|
||
apart from a highly active personality. Therefore do the more indolent of men
|
||
often seek to escape the rigors of truly religious activities by a species of
|
||
ingenious self-deception through resorting to a retreat to the false shelter of
|
||
stereotyped religious doctrines and dogmas. But true religion is alive.
|
||
Intellectual crystallization of religious concepts is the equivalent of
|
||
spiritual death. You cannot conceive of religion without ideas, but when
|
||
religion once becomes
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1121
|
||
|
||
reduced only to an idea, it is no longer religion; it has become merely a
|
||
species of human philosophy.
|
||
|
||
Again, there are other types of unstable and poorly disciplined souls who would
|
||
use the sentimental ideas of religion as an avenue of escape from the
|
||
irritating demands of living. 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." Mysticism, however, is often something of a
|
||
retreat from life which is embraced by those humans who do not relish the more
|
||
robust activities of living a religious life in the open arenas of human
|
||
society and commerce. True religion must act. Conduct will be the result of
|
||
religion when man actually has it, or rather when religion is permitted truly
|
||
to possess the man. Never will religion be content with mere thinking or
|
||
unacting feeling.
|
||
|
||
We are not blind to the fact that religion often acts unwisely, even
|
||
irreligiously, but it acts. Aberrations of religious conviction have led to
|
||
bloody persecutions, but always and ever religion does something; it is
|
||
dynamic!
|
||
|
||
3. KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM, AND INSIGHT
|
||
|
||
Intellectual deficiency or educational poverty unavoidably handicaps higher
|
||
religious attainment because such an impoverished environment of the spiritual
|
||
nature robs religion of its chief channel of philosophic contact with the world
|
||
of scientific knowledge. The intellectual factors of religion are important,
|
||
but their overdevelopment is likewise sometimes very handicapping and
|
||
embarrassing. Religion must continually labor under a paradoxical necessity:
|
||
the necessity of making effective use of thought while at the same time
|
||
discounting the spiritual serviceableness of all thinking.
|
||
|
||
Religious speculation is inevitable but always detrimental; speculation
|
||
invariably falsifies its object. Speculation tends to translate religion into
|
||
something material or humanistic, and thus, while directly interfering with the
|
||
clarity of logical thought, it indirectly causes religion to appear as a
|
||
function of the temporal world, the very world with which it should
|
||
everlastingly stand in contrast. Therefore will religion always be
|
||
characterized by paradoxes, the paradoxes resulting from the absence of the
|
||
experiential connection between the material and the spiritual levels of the
|
||
universe--morontia mota, the superphilosophic sensitivity for truth discernment
|
||
and unity perception.
|
||
|
||
Material feelings, human emotions, lead directly to material actions, selfish
|
||
acts. Religious insights, spiritual motivations, lead directly to religious
|
||
actions, unselfish acts of social service and altruistic benevolence.
|
||
|
||
Religious desire is the hunger quest for divine reality. Religious experience
|
||
is the realization of the consciousness of having found God. And when a human
|
||
being does find God, there is experienced within the soul of that being such an
|
||
indescribable restlessness of triumph in discovery that he is impelled to seek
|
||
loving service-contact with his less illuminated fellows, not to disclose that
|
||
he has found God, but rather to allow the overflow of the welling-up of eternal
|
||
goodness within his own soul to refresh and ennoble his fellows. Real religion
|
||
leads to increased social service.
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1122
|
||
|
||
Science, knowledge, leads to fact consciousness; religion, experience, leads to
|
||
value consciousness; philosophy, wisdom, leads to co-ordinate consciousness;
|
||
revelation (the substitute for morontia mota) leads to the consciousness of
|
||
true reality; while the co-ordination of the consciousness of fact, value, and
|
||
true reality constitutes awareness of personality reality, maximum of being,
|
||
together with the belief in the possibility of the survival of that very
|
||
personality.
|
||
|
||
Knowledge leads to placing men, to originating social strata and castes.
|
||
Religion leads to serving men, thus creating ethics and altruism. Wisdom leads
|
||
to the higher and better fellowship of both ideas and one's fellows. 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; wisdom 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.
|
||
|
||
Science seeks to identify, analyze, and classify the segmented parts of the
|
||
limitless cosmos. Religion grasps the idea-of-the-whole, the entire cosmos.
|
||
Philosophy attempts the identification of the material segments of science with
|
||
the spiritual-insight concept of the whole. Wherein philosophy fails in this
|
||
attempt, revelation succeeds, affirming that the cosmic circle is universal,
|
||
eternal, absolute, and infinite. This cosmos of the Infinite I AM is therefore
|
||
endless, limitless, and all-inclusive--timeless, spaceless, and unqualified.
|
||
And we bear testimony that the Infinite I AM is also the Father of Michael of
|
||
Nebadon and the God of human salvation.
|
||
|
||
Science indicates Deity as a fact; philosophy presents the idea of an Absolute;
|
||
religion envisions God as loving spiritual personality.Revelation affirms the
|
||
unity of the fact of Deity, the idea of the Absolute, and the spiritual
|
||
personality of God and, further, presents this concept as our Father--the
|
||
universal fact of existence, the eternal idea of mind, and the infinite spirit
|
||
of life.
|
||
|
||
The pursuit of knowledge constitutes science; the search for wisdom is
|
||
philosophy; the love for God is religion; the hunger for truth is a revelation.
|
||
But it is the indwelling Thought Adjuster that attaches the feeling of reality
|
||
to man's spiritual insight into the cosmos.
|
||
|
||
In science, the idea precedes the expression of its realization; in religion,
|
||
the experience of realization precedes the expression of the idea. There is a
|
||
vast difference between the evolutionary will-to-believe and the the product of
|
||
enlightened reason, religious insight, and revelation--the will that believes.
|
||
|
||
In evolution, religion often leads to man's creating his concepts of God;
|
||
revelation exhibits the phenomenon of God's evolving man himself, while in the
|
||
earth life of Christ Michael we behold the phenomenon of God's revealing
|
||
himself to man. Evolution tends to make God manlike; revelation tends to make
|
||
man Godlike.
|
||
|
||
Science is only satisfied with first causes, religion with supreme personality,
|
||
and philosophy with unity. Revelation affirms that these three are one, and
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1123
|
||
|
||
that all are good. The eternal real is the good of the universe and not the
|
||
time illusions of space evil. In the spiritual experience of all personalities,
|
||
always is it true that the real is the good and the good is the real.
|
||
|
||
4. THE FACT OF EXPERIENCE
|
||
|
||
Because of the presence in your minds of the Thought Adjuster, it is no more of
|
||
a mystery for you to know the mind of God than for you to be sure of the
|
||
consciousness of knowing any other mind, human or superhuman. Religion and
|
||
social consciousness have this in common: They are predicated on the
|
||
consciousness of other-mindness. The technique whereby you can accept another's
|
||
idea as yours is the same whereby you may "let the mind which was in Christ be
|
||
also in you."
|
||
|
||
What is human experience? It is simply any interplay between an active and
|
||
questioning self and any other active and external reality. The mass of
|
||
experience is determined by depth of concept plus totality of recognition of
|
||
the reality of the external. The motion of experience equals the force of
|
||
expectant imagination plus the keenness of the sensory discovery of the
|
||
external qualities of contacted reality. The fact of experience is found in
|
||
self-consciousness plus other-existences--other-thingness, other-mindness, and
|
||
other-spiritness.
|
||
|
||
Man very early becomes conscious that he is not alone in the world or the
|
||
universe. There develops a natural spontaneous self-consciousness of
|
||
other-mindness in the environment of selfhood. Faith translates this natural
|
||
experience into religion, the recognition of God as the reality--source,
|
||
nature, and destiny--of other-mindness. But such a knowledge of God is ever and
|
||
always a reality of personal experience. If God were not a personality, he
|
||
could not become a living part of the real religious experience of a human
|
||
personality.
|
||
|
||
The element of error present in human religious experience is directly
|
||
proportional to the content of materialism which contaminates the spiritual
|
||
concept of the Universal Father. Man's prespirit progression in the universe
|
||
consists in the experience of divesting himself of these erroneous ideas of the
|
||
nature of God and of the reality of pure and true spirit. Deity is more than
|
||
spirit but the spiritual approach is the only one possible to ascending man.
|
||
|
||
Prayer is indeed a part of religious experience, but it has been wrongly
|
||
emphasized by modern religions, much to the neglect of the more essential
|
||
communion of worship. The reflective powers of the mind are deepened and
|
||
broadened by worship. Prayer may enrich the life, but worship illuminates
|
||
destiny.
|
||
|
||
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.
|
||
|
||
5. THE SUPREMACY OF PURPOSIVE POTENTIAL
|
||
|
||
Although the establishment of the fact of belief is not equivalent to
|
||
establishing the fact of that which is believed, nevertheless, the evolutionary
|
||
progression of simple life to the status of personality does demonstrate the
|
||
fact of the existence of the potential of personality to start with. And in the
|
||
time universes,
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1124
|
||
|
||
potential is always supreme over the actual. In the evolving cosmos the
|
||
potential is what is to be, and what is to be is the unfolding of the purposive
|
||
mandates of Deity.
|
||
|
||
This same purposive supremacy is shown in the evolution of mind ideation when
|
||
primitive animal fear is transmuted into the constantly deepening reverence for
|
||
God and into increasing awe of the universe. Primitive man had more religious
|
||
fear than faith, and the supremacy of spirit potentials over mind actuals is
|
||
demonstrated when this craven fear is translated into living faith in spiritual
|
||
realities.
|
||
|
||
You can psychologize evolutionary religion but not the personal-experience
|
||
religion of spiritual origin. Human morality may recognize values, but only
|
||
religion can conserve, exalt, and spiritualize such values. But notwithstanding
|
||
such actions, religion is something more than emotionalized morality. Religion
|
||
is to morality as love is to duty, as sonship is to servitude, as essence is to
|
||
substance. Morality discloses an almighty Controller, a Deity to be served;
|
||
religion discloses an all-loving Father, a God to be worshiped and loved. And
|
||
again this is because the spiritual potentiality of religion is dominant over
|
||
the duty actuality of the morality of evolution.
|
||
|
||
6. THE CERTAINTY OF RELIGIOUS FAITH
|
||
|
||
The philosophic elimination of religious fear and the steady progress of
|
||
science add greatly to the mortality of false gods; and even though these
|
||
casualties of man-made deities may momentarily befog the spiritual vision, they
|
||
eventually destroy that ignorance and superstition which so long obscured the
|
||
living God of eternal love. 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.
|
||
|
||
The gods of primitive men may have been no more than shadows of themselves; the
|
||
living God is the divine light whose interruptions constitute the creation
|
||
shadows of all space.
|
||
|
||
The religionist of philosophic attainment has faith in a personal God of
|
||
personal salvation, something more than a reality, a value, a level of
|
||
achievement, an exalted process, a transmutation, the ultimate of time-space,
|
||
an idealization, the personalization of energy, the entity of gravity, a human
|
||
projection, the idealization of self, nature's upthrust, the inclination to
|
||
goodness, the forward impulse of evolution, or a sublime hypothesis. The
|
||
religionist has faith in a God of love. Love is the essence of religion and the
|
||
wellspring of superior civilization.
|
||
|
||
Faith transforms the philosophic God of probability into the saving God of
|
||
certainty in the personal religious experience. Skepticism may challenge the
|
||
theories of theology, but confidence in the dependability of personal
|
||
experience affirms the truth of that belief which has grown into faith.
|
||
|
||
Convictions about God may be arrived at through wise reasoning, but the
|
||
individual becomes God-knowing only by faith, through personal experience. In
|
||
much that pertains to life, probability must be reckoned with, but when
|
||
contacting with cosmic reality, certainty may be experienced when such meanings
|
||
and values are approached by living faith. The God-knowing soul dares to say,
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1125
|
||
|
||
"I know," even when this knowledge of God is questioned by the unbeliever who
|
||
denies such certitude because it is not wholly supported by intellectual logic.
|
||
To every such doubter the believer only replies, "How do you know that I do not
|
||
know?"
|
||
|
||
Though reason can always question faith, faith can always supplement both
|
||
reason and logic. Reason creates the probability which faith can transform into
|
||
a moral certainty, even a spiritual experience. God is the first truth and the
|
||
last fact; therefore does all truth take origin in him, while all facts exist
|
||
relative to him. God is absolute truth. As truth one may know God, but to
|
||
understand--to explain--God, one must explore the fact of the universe of
|
||
universes. The vast gulf between the experience of the truth of God and
|
||
ignorance as to the fact of God can be bridged only by living faith. Reason
|
||
alone cannot achieve harmony between infinite truth and universal fact.
|
||
|
||
Belief may not be able to resist doubt and withstand fear, but faith is always
|
||
triumphant over doubting, for faith is both positive and living. The positive
|
||
always has the advantage over the negative, truth over error, experience over
|
||
theory, spiritual realities over the isolated facts of time and space. The
|
||
convincing evidence of this spiritual certainty consists in the social fruits
|
||
of the spirit which such believers, faithers, yield as a result of this genuine
|
||
spiritual experience. Said Jesus: "If you love your fellows as I have loved
|
||
you, then shall all men know that you are my disciples."
|
||
|
||
To science God is a possibility, to psychology a desirability, to philosophy a
|
||
probability, to religion a certainty, an actuality of religious experience.
|
||
Reason demands that a philosophy which cannot find the God of probability
|
||
should be very respectful of that religious faith which can and does find the
|
||
God of certitude. Neither should science discount religious experience on
|
||
grounds of credulity, not so long as it persists in the assumption that man's
|
||
intellectual and philosophic endowments emerged from increasingly lesser
|
||
intelligences the further back they go, finally taking origin in primitive life
|
||
which was utterly devoid of all thinking and feeling.
|
||
|
||
The facts of evolution must not be arrayed against the truth of the reality of
|
||
the certainty of the spiritual experience of the religious living of the
|
||
God-knowing mortal. Intelligent men should cease to reason like children and
|
||
should attempt to use the consistent logic of adulthood, logic which tolerates
|
||
the concept of truth alongside the observation of fact. Scientific materialism
|
||
has gone bankrupt when it persists, in the face of each recurring universe
|
||
phenomenon, in refunding its current objections by referring what is admittedly
|
||
higher back into that which is admittedly lower. Consistency demands the
|
||
recognition of the activities of a purposive Creator.
|
||
|
||
Organic evolution is a fact; purposive or progressive evolution is a truth
|
||
which makes consistent the otherwise contradictory phenomena of the
|
||
ever-ascending achievements of evolution. The higher any scientist progresses
|
||
in his chosen science, the more will he abandon the theories of materialistic
|
||
fact in favor of the cosmic truth of the dominance of the Supreme Mind.
|
||
Materialism cheapens human life; the gospel of Jesus tremendously enhances and
|
||
supernally exalts every mortal. Mortal existence must be visualized as
|
||
consisting in the intriguing and fascinating experience of the realization of
|
||
the reality of the meeting of the human upreach and the divine and saving
|
||
downreach.
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1126
|
||
|
||
7. THE CERTITUDE OF THE DIVINE
|
||
|
||
The Universal Father, being self-existent, is also self-explanatory; he
|
||
actually lives in every rational mortal. But you cannot be sure about God
|
||
unless you know him; sonship is the only experience which makes fatherhood
|
||
certain. The universe is everywhere undergoing change. A changing universe is a
|
||
dependent universe; such a creation cannot be either final or absolute. A
|
||
finite universe is wholly dependent on the Ultimate and the Absolute. The
|
||
universe and God are not identical; one is cause, the other effect. The cause
|
||
is absolute, infinite, eternal, and changeless; the effect, time-space and
|
||
transcendental but ever changing, always growing.
|
||
|
||
God is the one and only self-caused fact in the universe. He is the secret of
|
||
the order, plan, and purpose of the whole creation of things and beings. The
|
||
everywhere-changing universe is regulated and stabilized by absolutely
|
||
unchanging laws, the habits of an unchanging God. The fact of God, the divine
|
||
law, is changeless; the truth of God, his relation to the universe, is a
|
||
relative revelation which is ever adaptable to the constantly evolving
|
||
universe.
|
||
|
||
Those who would invent a religion without God are like those who would gather
|
||
fruit without trees, have children without parents. You cannot have effects
|
||
without causes; only the I AM is causeless. The fact of religious experience
|
||
implies God, and such a God of personal experience must be a personal Deity.
|
||
You cannot pray to a chemical formula, supplicate a mathematical equation,
|
||
worship a hypothesis, confide in a postulate, commune with a process, serve an
|
||
abstraction, or hold loving fellowship with a law.
|
||
|
||
True, many apparently religious traits can grow out of nonreligious roots. Man
|
||
can, intellectually, deny God and yet be morally good, loyal, filial, honest,
|
||
and even idealistic. Man may graft many purely humanistic branches onto his
|
||
basic spiritual nature and thus apparently prove his contentions in behalf of a
|
||
godless religion, but such an experience is devoid of survival values,
|
||
God-knowingness and God-ascension. In such a mortal experience only social
|
||
fruits are forthcoming, not spiritual. The graft determines the nature of the
|
||
fruit, notwithstanding that the living sustenance is drawn from the roots of
|
||
original divine endowment of both mind and spirit.
|
||
|
||
The intellectual earmark of religion is certainty; the philosophical
|
||
characteristic is consistency; the social fruits are love and service.
|
||
|
||
The God-knowing individual is not one who is blind to the difficulties or
|
||
unmindful of the obstacles which stand in the way of finding God in the maze of
|
||
superstition, tradition, and materialistic tendencies of modern times. He has
|
||
encountered all these deterrents and triumphed over them, surmounted them by
|
||
living faith, and attained the highlands of spiritual experience in spite of
|
||
them. But it is true that many who are inwardly sure about God fear to assert
|
||
such feelings of certainty because of the multiplicity and cleverness of those
|
||
who assemble objections and magnify difficulties about believing in God. It
|
||
requires no great depth of intellect to pick flaws, ask questions, or raise
|
||
objections. But it does require brilliance of mind to answer these questions
|
||
and solve these difficulties; faith certainty is the greatest technique for
|
||
dealing with all such superficial contentions.
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1127
|
||
|
||
If science, philosophy, or sociology dares to become dogmatic in contending
|
||
with the prophets of true religion, then should God-knowing men reply to such
|
||
unwarranted dogmatism with that more farseeing dogmatism of the certainty of
|
||
personal spiritual experience, "I know what I have experienced because I am a
|
||
son of I AM." If the personal experience of a faither is to be challenged by
|
||
dogma, then this faith-born son of the experiencible Father may reply with that
|
||
unchallengeable dogma, the statement of his actual sonship with the Universal
|
||
Father.
|
||
|
||
Only an unqualified reality, an absolute, could dare consistently to be
|
||
dogmatic. Those who assume to be dogmatic must, if consistent, sooner or later
|
||
be driven into the arms of the Absolute of energy, the Universal of truth, and
|
||
the Infinite of love.
|
||
|
||
If the nonreligious approaches to cosmic reality presume to challenge the
|
||
certainty of faith on the grounds of its unproved status, then the spirit
|
||
experiencer can likewise resort to the dogmatic challenge of the facts of
|
||
science and the beliefs of philosophy on the grounds that they are likewise
|
||
unproved; they are likewise experiences in the consciousness of the scientist
|
||
or the philosopher.
|
||
|
||
Of God, the most inescapable of all presences, the most real of all facts, the
|
||
most living of all truths, the most loving of all friends, and the most divine
|
||
of all values, we have the right to be the most certain of all universe
|
||
experiences.
|
||
|
||
8. THE EVIDENCES OF RELIGION
|
||
|
||
The highest evidence of the reality and efficacy of religion consists in the
|
||
fact of human experience; namely, that man, naturally fearful and suspicious,
|
||
innately endowed with a strong instinct of self-preservation and craving
|
||
survival after death, is willing fully to trust the deepest interests of his
|
||
present and future to the keeping and direction of that power and person
|
||
designated by his faith as God. That is the one central truth of all religion.
|
||
As to what that power or person requires of man in return for this watchcare
|
||
and final salvation, no two religions agree; in fact, they all more or less
|
||
disagree.
|
||
|
||
Regarding the status of any religion in the evolutionary scale, it may best be
|
||
judged by its moral judgments and its ethical standards. The higher the type of
|
||
any religion, the more it encourages and is encouraged by a constantly
|
||
improving social morality and ethical culture. We cannot judge religion by the
|
||
status of its accompanying civilization; we had better estimate the real nature
|
||
of a civilization by the purity and nobility of its religion. Many of the
|
||
world's most notable religious teachers have been virtually unlettered. The
|
||
wisdom of the world is not necessary to an exercise of saving faith in eternal
|
||
realities.
|
||
|
||
The difference in the religions of various ages is wholly dependent on the
|
||
difference in man's comprehension of reality and on his differing recognition
|
||
of moral values, ethical relationships, and spirit realities.
|
||
|
||
Ethics is the eternal social or racial mirror which faithfully reflects the
|
||
otherwise unobservable progress of internal spiritual and religious
|
||
developments. Man has always thought of God in the terms of the best he knew,
|
||
his deepest ideas and highest ideals. Even historic religion has always created
|
||
its God conceptions out of its highest recognized values. Every intelligent
|
||
creature gives the name of God to the best and highest thing he knows.
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1128
|
||
|
||
Religion, when reduced to terms of reason and intellectual expression, has
|
||
always dared to criticize civilization and evolutionary progress as judged by
|
||
its own standards of ethical culture and moral progress.
|
||
|
||
While personal religion precedes the evolution of human morals, it is
|
||
regretfully recorded that institutional religion has invariably lagged behind
|
||
the slowly changing mores of the human races. Organized religion has proved to
|
||
be conservatively tardy. The prophets have usually led the people in religious
|
||
development; the theologians have usually held them back. Religion, being a
|
||
matter of inner or personal experience, can never develop very far in advance
|
||
of the intellectual evolution of the races.
|
||
|
||
But religion is never enhanced by an appeal to the so-called miraculous. The
|
||
quest for miracles is a harking back to the primitive religions of magic. 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. And your highest religion, the life
|
||
of Jesus, was just such a personal experience: man, mortal man, seeking God and
|
||
finding him to the fullness during one short life in the flesh, while in the
|
||
same human experience there appeared God seeking man and finding him to the
|
||
full satisfaction of the perfect soul of infinite supremacy. And that is
|
||
religion, even the highest yet revealed in the universe of Nebadon--the earth
|
||
life of Jesus of Nazareth.
|
||
|
||
[Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1129
|
||
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
|
||
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
|
||
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
|
||
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
|
||
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
|
||
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
|
||
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
|
||
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
|
||
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
|
||
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
|
||
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
|
||
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
|
||
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
|
||
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
|
||
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
|
||
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
|
||
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
|
||
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
|
||
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
|
||
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
|
||
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
|
||
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
|
||
The Adjuster And The Soul Personality Survival Seraphic Guardians Of Destiny
|
||
Seraphic Planetary Government The Supreme Being The Almighty Supreme God The
|
||
Supreme Supreme And Ultimate--time And Space The Bestowals Of Christ Michael
|
||
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>Ŀ
|
||
<EFBFBD> // <20> <20> <20> <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> The Real <20> The Reality Of <20> Urantia Book <20> Search <20> SiteMap! <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> Nature... <20> ... <20> PA... <20> <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
|
||
//
|
||
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>Ŀ
|
||
<EFBFBD> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> SPIRITWEB ORG (info@spiritweb.org), <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> http://www.spiritweb.org <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> Webmaster <webmaster@spiritweb.org> <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> ONLINE SINCE 1993. MAINTAINED IN SWITZERLAND. <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> DISTRIBUTED TO CALIFORNIA, SPAIN, ITALY, SOUTH AFRICA, <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> AUSTRALIA <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
|