Human Affection & Respect Can Change the Course of Destiny
I want to share with you certain insights concerning a decisive turn of events in American history from a biography of George Washington that I am reading. I am referring to volume two, GEORGE WASHINGTON IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (1775-1783), by James Thomas Flexner. I had known about what Washington did that day before but not in such interesting detail. What happened I think reflects how the values of love and loyalty shape destiny.
The date is March 15, 1783. The place is in Newburgh, New York, on the west side of the Hudson River. The action occurs in a "temple" built by Continental Army soldiers and used by them for worship on Sundays and as a dancing academy on other days.
The issue concerned the discontent and bitterness of officers in the Continental Army under the overall command of George Washington as Commander-in-Chief. The officers had not been paid properly by Congress in years (along with the common soldiers) nor was any real provision being made for their retirement once the war was over. This produced a deep, bitter sense of rejection and insecurity that was perceived by them as insult and financial injury by the Congress and society at large. There was standing room only in the temple on the 15th as they debated the question of whether or not the army should use its military power to take over Congress and establish some form of military dictatorship as a way to force Congress and the states in giving them what they rightly earned through service in the war. Many officers hoped the Commander-in-Chief would lead them and some had tried to persuade Washington to become a new American king!
Although General Washington was not expected to come in person that day to this meeting, he showed up suddenly in the middle of their deliberations. Reminding the men that he too had struggled and suffered with them during eight years of war, he noted that their cause was righteous and just. But he warned them that only bloodshed would result from an assertion of military power over civilian authority. You will "open the flood gates of civil discord and deluge our rising empire in blood." Although the word was not then available, Washington was really talking about ugly prospect of fascism. However, Washington and the leadership of his generation were fully aware of the Roman example concerning the destruction of the Roman Republic by generals who made themselves Caesars. He made it very clear to them that he would help them in every way his ability and prestige would permit within the normal political context of Congress' authority over the military (this was the basic relationship from the beginning of the war). He also stated flatly that he would never lead a military takeover in America.
As they listened politely and respectfully to him, the officers in the audience were somewhat perplexed as to what to do next, but were not moved as a group to step back from the abyss.
Then, their General took out a piece of paper--a message from a member of Congress who was sympathetic with their financial plight and promised to do something about it--and fumbled around as he could not read it, whereupon, he took out a pair of eye glasses. (Very few of the men knew he wore them; they were shocked to see them.) Washington said, "Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country." When the General finished reading the short statement, and without any anti-climatic epilogue, he walked out of the temple, got on his horse and rode back to his headquarters.
In the words of the biographer, Flexner, "This simple statement achieved what all Washington's rhetoric and all his argument had been unable to achieve. The officers were instantly in tears, and...their eyes looked with love at the commander who had led them all so far and so long." The impetus for military takeover dissolved and the officers drafted a new address to Congress expressing a willingness to trust the process that General Washington had outlined.
In the end, it was not ideology or logic that won the day and prevented a dictatorship; it was the combination of affection and respect that constitute that winning loyalty, so admirable in the human heart. I am reminded of the love for Jesus that, with one exception, kept the Apostles loyal to their Master through thick and thin.
Eventually, some financial restitution was made for the officers but not to the full extent necessary. Washington made good on his promise to work very hard on their behalf with Congress and the states. He was not satisfied with the final arrangements made for the officers but had nonetheless done the best he could do under the circumstances of the early 1780s in which the central government, Congress, and the primitive credit system of the thirteen states, did not allow the proper funding of the war effort. All this was before the establishment of the Republic we now enjoy.
George Washington's decision that March 15, 1783, demonstrates that power does not always corrupt, even absolute power. Washington could have gone in an entirely different political direction and destroyed what has proven to be one of the bedrock Constitutional principles of the United States: separation of powers--in this case, the civilian control of the military. The author, Thomas Flexner, concludes, and I agree with him, that "Americans can never be adequately grateful that George Washington possessed the power and the will to intervene effectively in what may well have been the most dangerous hour the United States has ever known."
In Light & Life, Charles Olivea
(Charles is a retired High School History Teacher living in Santa Fe, NM.)
I was born into the home of a dysfunctional family, went through the pains and sorrows of childhood, adolescence, and adult life. There were moments while alone, confusion overcame me and in my pains and sorrows I asked myself what is it all for? What is this that we call consciousness? I found myself pondering on what I felt then was chaos and madness.
For many years my soul has like that of many others, contemplated the complexity of the reason for being. My search has led me into a mental maze of concepts and ideas. I tried desperately to analyze the intricate and illusive states of consciousness, and to maybe catch a glimpse of the cause of all causes. I explored, meditated and performed self-introspection. But the “reason for being” still eluded me, as a cunning fox eludes the hound. I watched the years go by as one watches a flock of birds going south for the winter. After many years of suffering this dilemma, grace finally came and I was blessed with peace and understanding.
On July 4 1997, I came across The Urantia Book. Urantia means “earth” according to those Higher Beings that claimed to have presented this book to mankind. The book provides us with the history of our universe, our planet and us. When I found the book and started reading it I went into a state of profound awe for months. I recognized the book as the information I have been searching for most of my life. It had such an impact on my life, that I wrote an autobiography entitle Lord I Got Over without any previous experience as a writer. I also recently completed another book, with the same title as this essay, which is in the process of being published. This I did without any formal education; as a matter of fact I had to quit school before finishing high school. I grew up in a home with an alcoholic father, who made my life a living hell. I was able however to secure a High School GED while I was in the army for three years. Just about all of my education was self-taught.
During the 1980’s Dr. Raymond Moody did extensive research in the field of near death experience (NDE). Patients who experienced near-death invariably asserted that life is a continuum. After leaving this dimension we continue our evolving in other dimensions. Some patients talked about the wonderful beings they met in other dimensions. These beings are the essence of love. The patients also talked about our continuous education in those other worlds. They became aware that after death we don’t go to heaven and suddenly become perfect beings as so many religions teach. The road to perfection is a process. It will take million of years before we reach the final stage… perfection; just as it took millions upon millions of years for us to reach the current stage of our existence.
According to The Urantia Book, our planet earth crust started to cool down around one-billion years ago, that is when those Higher Beings gave our planet its name Urantia. Around six-hundred million years ago a scouting party was sent to our planet from those higher dimensions to report on its suitability for becoming a life experiment station. Around five-hundred and fifty-million years ago Higher Beings, referred to as Life Carriers, in the higher worlds initiated the original life pattern on our planet. This life pattern started in earth’s oceans when the water on our world reached a certain desired briny mixture. Our primordial ancestors were actually the slime and ooze of the ancient bed in the lethargic and warm water bays and lagoons of the vast shoreline of Ancient Island. Around five hundred million years ago primitive marine vegetable life was well established on Urantia. Around four-hundred and fifty million years ago the transition from vegetable life to animal life took place in the briny sea waters. Eventually, animal life forms evolved, left the sea and crawled upon the land.
After million of years out of the sea there were huge land animals on our planet, this occurred because the Life Carriers were manipulating the life force in the seeds that they had created and God had granted the breath of life. After million of years those huge land animals begin to disappear and smaller primates begin appearing on the scene, and many million of years later humans began to make their appearance and eventually evolving into thinking beings. It was during this period that the adjuster the spirit of God the God within came and indwelled in the minds of our ancient ancestors.
The Bible mentions in two places that God created man. In Genesis 1:27, God spoke to the word or (his Son) and said, “let us make man in our own image, after our own likeness.” In Genesis 2:7, of The Bible it states that “God made man of the dust of the ground, breathed into his nostril the breath of life and man became a living soul.” It appears that those ancient writers misunderstood the information concerning our ancient ancestors, when they reached that stage of their evolution, where the spirit of God came and dwelled in the minds of our ancient ancestors. Those writers evidently took this to be part of the creation of mankind. According to The Urantia Book this is when mankind actually became a true human being. The purpose of this indwelling was to create the soul and to lead human-kind to higher worlds or higher dimensions. At this time, the combined forces of the God within and the free-willed human being created the living soul. The God within and the human creature are the parents of the potential immortal soul. Also, at this conjunction, the body of the individual became the temple of God… as referred to by The Bible. At this stage of their development, humans became free will creatures; free to choose to do God’s will and become immortal beings. The soul created by the God within and the free-will human beings is what survives death. This soul survival is one of the main reasons Jesus allowed himself to be put to death, he wanted to prove to us that the soul survived death. On the third day after the death of the body the soul will wake up in another dimension. It will continue to evolve if it continues to do the will of God. Otherwise that soul will sleep until the resurrection. Our living and dying (the dying of the body) has a purpose. That purpose is revealed to us more fully as we ascend to higher dimension.
Those who ascended into higher dimensions won’t immediately become prefect beings. After transcending to higher dimensions, it will take million of years of evolving in those higher worlds before one become a perfected being. In time we will become what those Higher Beings call “finaliters.” At this stage of our development we will enter Paradise where we will see the Father. We will be Super-universe administrators. We, who started out as God’s lowest “will creatures,” from this state will become a group of God’s greatest administrators in the universe. This is due to the fact that we will know every stage from the lowest to the highest, didn’t the Master Teacher, Jesus, say to us that the “last shall be first.”
To the best of my ability I shared with my fellow humans, my understanding of the purpose of life at this stage of my development. Using The Urantia Book as my guide, I found my purpose in life and since then peace and serenity has been my constant companion. When one reaches the point in their life, that they understand where they are from, and know their destiny, it is a wonderful feeling.
As a person who believes in the existence of God it’s hard to imagine what it must be like to not believe in the first great source and center of all things and beings. I find it impossible to extricate myself from my tap root and I apologize if this article offends. It’s not intended to convert those who don’t believe in God but rather as a statement of the personal faith experience of one who does believe. I actually respect and honor Atheists and Agnostics as logical thinkers, people who reserve the right to decide for themselves what they believe. There was a time in my life when I tended toward Atheism; not because I rejected the notion of God but because I had never really heard anything I cared to believe about God.
Although I was raised to believe in God and Jesus I never really belonged to a church. When I was 16, I had a visionary dream that significantly increased my longing to find out the truth of these matters. This led me to a serious involvement with a fundamental Christian belief system which eventuated in my rejection of Christianity. I still believed in God and Jesus, but I rejected the concept that divine beings could sanction the eternal torment of someone who was just trying to eek out a life on this most difficult planet. I remember telling God at that time, “You may be just the way they say you are and if so, I’m sorry, but I can’t worship you. But somehow, I don’t think you are that way. If you want me to know you, you will have to reveal yourself to me because I’m not getting involved with any more religions!” (I am thankful now that I was able at such a young age to separate the reality of God from the teachings about God.) Shortly thereafter, The Urantia Book came to me serendipitously as I suffered devastating grief over the loss of my dearest friend and supporter, my Dad.
This remarkable book set me on a journey of personal spiritual transformation that is nearly impossible to describe. Suffice to say, it revealed to me the God of my dreams, the God that I could willingly fall down to worship. It put God in a cosmic context that was larger than anything I could have conceived. It revealed God as the first great source and center of all things loving, true, beautiful and good. Because I already believed in love, truth, beauty and goodness it wasn’t such a stretch to imagine that they took origin at a central point in ultimate perfection.
In the final analysis, I cannot defend or prove the reality of God any more than I can prove that love is real. God, like love, cannot be scientifically proven only experientially felt. Ultimately, I honor every human who searches for real value and meaning in this short but potent life as “a child without duplicate in infinity, a will creature irreplaceable in all eternity.” The Urantia Book (12:7.9)
What’s a Nice Jewish Girl Like Me Doing in a Place Like This?
This article is adapted from presentations given in Oklahoma City in August 2001 and in Chicago, (“What’s a Nice Jewish Girl Like Me Doing in a Place Like This?”) in October 2001
Every year as far back as I can remember I went to the synagogue for the whole day with my dad on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. I sat in the back in the women’s gallery with my grandmother. Like Jews all over the world we went to pray for forgiveness from God for all our sins against him, to repent and be released from some unknown punishment. We prayed and we fasted all day long. If God was merciful we were inscribed in the Book of Life for another year. I never knew exactly what would happen if we weren’t inscribed, but I guessed that the people who died that year had not been forgiven.
Judaism is a religion that is based on the law, the law of God presented to Moses at Mount Sinai. Many Jewish people think of God as the Lord God of Israel. He is a just God and he expects his law to be followed. When God is disobeyed, he is fearful and punishing. Did he not banish Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and subject women forever after to pain in childbirth, turn Lot’s wife to a pillar of salt and destroy all life on the earth except for Noah’s family and an arkful of animals? And on Passover Jews praise God for sending devastating plagues on the Egyptians including the destruction of their first born sons. The Old Testament is filled with the stories of God’s laws and his wrath.
In Paper 96, “Yahweh-God of the Hebrews,” a Melchizedek of Nebadon tells us that in spite of Moses’s valiant efforts to assure the fleeing Hebrews that God loved them and would not forsake or destroy them, they were also told during a cataclysmic volcanic explosion of Mount Sinai that “their God was mighty, terrible, a devouring fire, and all-powerful.” (96:4.5,6) Although there is much evidence of a God who loves his people in the Old Testament, the idea of a just and powerful God is the one that persists. The Ten Commandments given to Moses at Mount Sinai are mostly “Thou shalt nots” and the Mosaic law consists of 613 laws that Orthodox Jews obey to this day. The traditions are very powerful and I grew up imagining a bearded king in the clouds who was watching me and waiting for me to slip up.
I always had a deep consciousness of my Jewishness. I was culturally conditioned and thought I was religious. My dad had an orthodox Jewish upbringing and a very strong Jewish identity. He wanted my mother to keep the orthodox religious traditions at home that he had grown up with. Some of those included “keeping the Sabbath holy,” lighting Sabbath candles and keeping a kosher home. “Keeping kosher” involves a strict set of dietary laws requiring separate silverware, dishes and cookware for meat meals and dairy meals. It is forbidden to eat milk products and meat together because of a Mosaic law which states: “Thou shalt not eat the flesh of a kid in its mothers milk.” There is also a long list of forbidden foods including pork products and shellfish. My mom didn’t light Sabbath candles or keep a kosher home but we ate no pork or shrimp, never had milk products and meat together, and I saw my dad get violently ill after he learned that a roasted chicken he had eaten was basted in butter. He believed with all his heart that he should spend the Sabbath at the synagogue (the Fifth Commandment says: “Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy”) but he was employed as a retail merchant in a children’s clothing store, and Saturday was the busiest shopping day. The stores were closed on Sunday so Christians could go to church but Saturday was a work day. Like Matadormus and the Jews of old, he was raised to believe that wealth was the token of God’s favor. He believed he never prospered because he disobeyed God by not keeping the Sabbath.
My dad was sixteen when he came to America from Poland with his mother on a steamship in steerage with one bag. They had lived in a little village called Kowel. (I imagine it to be something like Tevya’s village.) His grandfather was a traveling rabbi and there was great joy in the village when he was home. He went to the synagogue schools, spoke Yiddish and Hebrew at home and Polish in public. He told me how he had been taunted and abused by soldiers who often rode through the village. He never knew if they were Polish, Russian or German, but he believed they were Christians. They shouted, “Christ-killer” “Jud de Palestina”(Jew – go to Palestine) as they passed, and they often cut off the beards of the old men with their swords. When he was very young he saw one of them cut off part of his grandfather’s chin with his sword. He learned to spit three times when he passed a church “tu-tu-tu.” He lived in fear of Christians.
He knew first hand of rampant anti-Semitism, he experienced the persecution generated by Jew-hating Poles, Russians and Germans, and continued hearing about the pogroms in Europe from relatives who managed to get out by the late 30s.
Hitler’s “final solution” to the elimination of the Jews resulted in the horrors of the Holocaust and my dad and most of the people he knew lost many family members. It was very important to him that his children maintained the faith and survived as Jews.
When my parents were able to buy their first house it was in what they called a “non-Jewish” neighborhood. I was the only Jewish kid in the school. I knew so little about Christianity that I missed getting 100% on a language test because I answered that the gender of the word “monk” could be male or female. I thought “monk” was a short way of saying monkey. In class we celebrated Easter by decorating eggs to take home and Christmas by making decorations and gifts for our families. All my friends went to church on Sunday. Celebrating Christian holidays seemed perfectly normal to me. But not to my dad.
So he made sure I spent a lot of time at the synagogue. After school on Tuesdays and Thursdays I went to Hebrew School, on Friday nights we went to the Sabbath service, on Saturdays I went to “Junior Congregation” while the adults who were off on Saturday were in the synagogue, and on Sundays I went to Sunday School. I learned to read and write Hebrew phonetically so I could participate in the rituals of the synagogue service. They were conducted in Hebrew and I participated fully – without ever understanding a word. I also wrote “Merry Christmas” phonetically in Hebrew on the chalkboard when my third grade teacher was doing a lesson on how Christmas was celebrated in other lands. It didn’t occur to me that Jews in Israel didn’t say “Merry Christmas.” I engaged in many mindless rituals, which unlike Jesus, I didn’t question. As prescribed, I kissed the mezuzah (a religious object on the doorpost of Jewish homes) and said to myself: “The Lord shall preserve our going out and our coming in, from this time forth and even forevermore.” (124:4.7) I never wrote out the word God because it was forbidden. I wrote G-d. I wore a Jewish star around my neck and studied to become a “daughter of the covenant” (a bat mitzvah) when I was thirteen. I learned all the Old Testament Bible Stories and believed they were true. I’m embarrassed that when I was in a ninth grade biology class and the teacher asked how life began I unhesitatingly said: “with Adam and Eve.”
At the time I thought that doing those things was my religion. I realize now, however, that my experience of being Jewish was more social, cultural and political than religious. My Hebrew School lessons were filled with politics. I was totally immersed in the excitement when Israel officially became the Jewish homeland. The Jews finally had a home, a land where they would be free from persecution. And my studies were filled with morality. I developed sense of righteousness and of guilt and duty. I was a good student because the high value Jews placed on education was always evident. My parents sacrificed many pleasures to save enough money to put three kids through college. I enjoyed celebrating all the holidays with family and participated in all the events at the synagogue. My father’s hope was that I would maintain the traditions, become a leader in the Jewish community, perhaps the head of a national Jewish women’s organization. I was happy with my life and my religion. The problem was that I knew nothing about who God really was, nothing about the spirit within, nothing about doing God’s will, and I thought about him only when I was doing something wrong.
One Christmas I went to a church service at midnight with a friend. We were seated at the front of a balcony. The service was unfamiliar, but magical and I was totally engaged. Suddenly the preacher was looking at me and shouting: “Have you been saved? Have you taken Jesus as your Lord and Master?” And then he was yelling: “Come down, confess your sins and take Jesus as your savior.” I thought he was talking directly to me and I was scared out of my mind. I wondered how he knew I was Jewish and that I didn’t believe in Jesus.
Of course, I was not about to believe in Jesus. Like Mary and Joseph up to the time Jesus was twelve years old, I could never have “even faintly dreamed that Jesus was indeed and in truth the actual creator of this local universe of things and beings (124:4.4) Jewish people just don’t believe in Jesus as divine. First of all, the belief in one God is a certainty in Judaism. Jews KNOW that there simply are not any other gods, especially one who died on a cross and came back to life in three days. They obey the First Commandment: “I am the Lord thy God and thou shalt have no other gods before me.” In fact, as Urantia Book readers know the belief in one God is the revelation of Melchizedek and the legacy of Abraham and Moses. The most important Jewish prayer, the Sh’ma, (“Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonoi Elohaynu, Adonoi Echad - Hear Oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one”) is the first prayer that is taught to Jewish children and the last one uttered before one dies. It is repeated many times daily at synagogue services all over the world. It was certainly repeated by Jesus in the synagogue in Nazareth and in the Temple at Jerusalem. The “Sh’ma” was the answer Jesus gave to one of the Pharisees who while trying to entrap him asked: “Which is the greatest commandment?” Jesus answered: “There is but one commandment, and that one is the greatest of all, and that commandment is: ”Hear Oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one…” (174:4.2)
Secondly, “Jesus” is kind of a bad word in most Jewish households. The persecutions during the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, the pogroms, the Holocaust, widespread anti-Semitism – much of the suffering that Jews have experienced is in some way laid at the feet of Jesus. They make no distinction between Christianity and Jesus. And finally, there is the feeling of the need to perpetuate the race. Today the Jewish population is approximately 13.5 million and some fear that the downward trend indicates that Jews may disappear in a few generations. Jews fear assimilation, intermarriage and especially conversion to Christianity.
No, I was not about to believe in Jesus. But I had lots of Christian friends and I liked everybody. It never occurred to me to think who was Jewish and who was not. However, it concerned my parents that I was dating “gentiles.” In spite of their constant efforts to make me go out with Jewish boys I liked the Italian boys and my dad was very worried that I would fall in love and marry a non-Jewish man. His concern was so great that he uprooted our family and moved to a town that was not “restricted” and had a sizable Jewish population. There I would likely meet a nice Jewish boy and get married. I did! I met Steve almost immediately and six years later we had a big Jewish wedding.
So how did I come to see Jesus as divine? I was involved in Jewish organizations and on the way to fulfilling my earthly father’s dream. I believed I was Cinderella and I had married the prince. But our early years together were very difficult. In the first year Steve’s dad died suddenly and tragically and we became responsible for his despondent mom and sixteen year old sister. I had intended to teach while Steve finished graduate school, but we had an unplanned baby and I was unable to continue teaching full-time. I found my mother in law to be very emotionally needy and demanding, and I was young and immature and didn’t handle things well. There was lots of conflict and sadness and life was not the fairy tale I had imagined it would be.
I was confused, unhappy and not coping well, but Steve was searching. He was searching for meaning and he was searching for truth. For many years he had studied philosophers and truth seekers, explored many paths and contemplated the meaning of life. I went along for the ride, but solutions to our problems were not forthcoming and the quality of life didn’t improve very much. And then he found and began to read The Urantia Book and I saw a significant emotional change in him that seemed very real. In spite of all the chaos and conflict around us, he was peaceful. And it lasted, and I knew he had found something really important. So in spite of the fact that the book had something to do with Jesus (and the idea frightened me very much) I began to read it too. And it was in the pages of The Urantia Book that I first found Jesus.
At first I saw that there was much about his young life that I could relate to personally. Like me, as a child he lived in a place that was more gentile than Jewish and spent lots of time in the synagogue. He engaged in the same rituals (although he questioned their meanings, which I never did) and celebrated the same Jewish holidays. He celebrated Hannukah, the Festival of Lights commemorating the dedication of the Temple after the victory of the Macabbees; Purim, the feast of Esther and Israel’s deliverance through her; Passover, the commemoration of the escape from Egypt and the sparing of Jewish first born sons; Succoth, the feast of the first fruits and the harvest ingathering; and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Like most Jewish boys he was circumcised eight days after birth, and like Steve, and our son Marc, who were first born sons like Jesus, he was ritually redeemed from sacrifice in a temple ceremony. At thirteen, like Jewish boys the world over, when Jesus graduated from the course of training at the synagogue he was pronounced a “son of the commandment” (bar mitzvah). This is a very big occasion today for most Jewish boys.
When his mother joined him on his Passover trip to the Temple for his consecration as a son of the commandment she was made to sit in the women’s gallery. I remembered the little synagogue where I sat in the back balcony with my grandmother. Women took no part in the religious life of the Jews in Jesus’ time, and are still segregated from the men in Orthodox synagogues today. For almost 4000 years when orthodox men recite the morning prayer, they have prayed: “Blessed art thou the Eternal Our God, King of the Universe who hath not made me a woman.” Jesus’ treatment of women shocked the apostles, but “he made it very clear to them that women were to be accorded equal rights with men in the kingdom.” (138:8.11) As a young man, in spite of the fact “that girls of Jewish families received little education, Jesus maintained that they should go to the same school as boys, and since the synagogue school would not receive them he conducted a home school especially for [his sisters.]” (127:1.5) That endeared him to me.
He openly and graciously shared his relationship with his Father in heaven. He knew him to be kind and compassionate, loving and merciful, a Father who loved each of his children personally and affectionately. It was so different from my vision of a powerful God of judgment and anger. I loved when he had his little talks with him. I began to try it myself instead of mindlessly repeating the 23rd Psalm or the “Our Father.” God didn’t talk back to me, but I began to realize that he was there, and that he was my friend – not my judge. I began to love God instead of fear him, and ask him what he wanted me to do, and not be afraid to do it. I began to have a relationship with God and Jesus was teaching me how, and when I was in doubt about what God wanted, Jesus was there to show me the way. He was the way.
Because of him my marriage improved. I realized that if there were problems to solve I needed to look inside myself for the power of goodness to make the changes, not to the supposed wrongdoer. The story of Jesus and Anaxand in Caesarea made a profound impact on me. My son Marc doesn’t know it, but I became a more competent and caring mother by learning from Jesus who was the master parent to his brothers and sisters. Because of Jesus I became a better teacher. I noticed that my teaching was changing. I began to look more for the children’s motives than at their behavior. I tried to give them what they needed before they asked rather than as a reward for good behavior.
His fatherly treatment of aggressors helped me to see aggressive parents at school in a new way. Our district had been accused of “institutional racism” and white teachers were under scrutiny and attack by many black parents. One day I was summoned to meet with a single mom who had just moved to town and whose son was to be in my class. She pointed her finger at me and yelled threateningly, “I know about this district and I know the law and I don’t expect my son to get a fair shake and I’ll be watching you.” It was a scary moment, my heart was pounding, and I took a deep breath and prayed: “Help me Father,” and then I heard myself say to her, “Nickolas is one lucky boy to have an advocate like you in his corner. I can’t imagine what my life would have been like if my mom cared about me the way you care about him.” She was completely disarmed and we became friends and partners in Nickolas’ education. I realized later it was the Spirit of Truth speaking and I knew then for the first time what it meant that Jesus would always be with me in times of trouble. And he is.
My dad didn’t have to worry. I am a Jew. Belief in the divinity of Jesus is not conversion to Christianity. It is a deepening of faith in God. Jesus kept all that was fine and beautiful in the Jewish teachings and enlarged the concept of God’s nature through his life. He asked his followers to believe with him, not in him. I was inspired by his teachings but I was won over by the life he lived. Jesus’ love is irresistible. He was God’s love revealed and is the most beautiful personal expression of God on earth. Because of him I know I am a beloved child of God. And that’s simply divine!
Bobbie Dreier is a retired teacher. She is the grandmother of Matthew and Jason. Bobbie and her husband Steve recently celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. Currently president of The Urantia Book Society of Greater New York, she has been actively involved in Urantia Book activities with Steve for over 30 years.
Xerpi
