My friends made a big fuss when their Mom predicted her death. Well, it’s not everyday Mom says she is going to die. Their Mom did succumb to lung cancer later that day. We sat and they talked about what a great person she was and reminisced on old times long gone. But they kept coming back to Mom’s recent prediction. They found great meaning in this event. Much of it seems to have come from their faith in Mom’s organizational abilities. Planning her end was consistent with the way she lived her life. Thus in their minds the prediction was an extension of who she was and not some random expressed thought that just happened to come true.
The faith of many in God is also connected to this process of finding meaning in the seemingly random events of life. The current emotional explosion in Muslim dominated countries reflects this search for meaning through the connection of theology and random events. The Danish consulate in Lebanon was burned to the ground by a mob because of a cartoon in a Danish newspaper. There doesn’t seem to be a way of rationalizing this event. There is no obvious connection between the newspaper and the government of Denmark. There is no obvious connection between a worldwide religious movement and some guy doodling on a piece of paper. And yet the protestors define the meaning of the event as being an “insult to our faith”. Despite the difficulty in rationalizing violence as a religious faith response, the protestors put all of the pieces together and went on the attack. The problem is that many faith responses – and this one in particular – appear to be functioning outside of the bounds of reason.
The Urantia Book says that religion is “wholly rational insight which originates in man’s mind-experience” (1105.2). When the book speaks of insight it is talking about that learning which comes from the spiritual forces which are influencing us to be more Godlike. When the book speaks of rationality it is talking about the reasoning abilities inherent within the human mind. In other words – true religious experience involves both spiritual guidance and human reasoning. The book says that religion is reasonable, rational and logical. It also says that even though spiritual truth is beyond reason, reason is an important part of our growing experience of God’s presence. And so, religious concepts should always be able to withstand the scrutiny of human reason. God wants us to use our minds as well as our hearts when developing the highest human concepts of our Father in Heaven.
The continuing world-wide violence in the name of religion shows that our world needs to reject religious ideas which do not stand up to reasonable examination. The search for meaning cannot be held hostage by the mixing of random events with age old traditions. Too many people are locked into belief systems which make no logical sense in our quickly advancing world culture. The ideas of The Urantia Book, which I believe are the most reasonable and logical of any and all religious concepts to date, need to be promoted to the fullest extent. It isn’t enough to urge someone to read the book. The concepts within the book need to be promoted as much as the book itself. Unquestioned belief systems need to be replaced by the reasonable concepts that were given to us through revealed truth. It is these truth concepts stimulating the inherent logic of our minds in concert with the always present spiritual forces that will move the search for meaning ever higher.
Steve Dreier We are taught that "One is free to choose and act only within the realm of one's consciousness. (377:5)
The sincere study of The Urantia Book has produced, for many of us, a genuine expansion of consciousness, introducing new possibilities for choice and action, particularly with respect to God. The concepts we have about the Universal Father must necessarily condition our experience of relationship with him. When God is small and far removed it is difficult to rely upon him to any great extent. But the Universal Father of The Urantia Book is found to be infinitely loving, infinitely powerful, and the closest and dearest friend any of us shall ever know. We are given a philosophic foundation upon which we may exercise a level of childlike trust in God which far exceeds what was previously possible for us.
But philosophy is not faith. This expanded life with the Father is not automatic; we must each choose to have it. Each of us is a freewill being, at least with respect to that which is spiritual. We are not compelled to either seek or do the Father's will; it must be a matter of voluntary, genuine, and wholehearted personal choice. We are obliged to confront and answer the question: Do we really want to do the Father's will?
What do we know about the Father's will? Quite a lot really, at least in the general sense. We know that the Father's will involves such concepts as truth, beauty, and goodness; it is associated with the positive elements of relationship: love, service, devotion, mercy, kindness, loyalty, patience, sincerity, etc. We know that his will is not self-centered or self-seeking but outgoing, sharing, and giving. And we know that it utterly transcends our human conception of these values, for it is the kind of will which loves and serves even a so-called enemy. In the will of God there is no provision for human intolerance or unfairness, not to mention anger, hate, and revenge.
On the contrary, the Father's will implies a devoted life of unselfish and wholehearted service which is freely given as, when, and where required. But it is not sentimental or foolish. It does not condone idleness, immaturity, or the pursuit of that which is evil. The Father's will requires real courage, persistent effort, and above all, a living and personal faith. We know it is a high ideal, a grand and inexpressibly glorious purpose, and that it can really be understood only by being lived. And we further know that it is ours for the asking, if we truly desire to have it. Whatever the specific and personal nature of the Father's will for us, it is certain to be reflective of these general qualities.
So, do we really want to do the Father's will.? Do these generalities provide us with enough information to formulate a decision? Of course what is being asked may seem impossibly high; we may fear that we are not capable of living life on such an exalted level of loving service. Many of us have probably experienced enough of our own faults and failures to cause us to doubt our ability to live in such a manner, even if we sincerely wanted to. The real question, however, is not can we do it but rather do we really want to do it? Do we want to give ourselves to the Father to love and serve as he directs, and with all that this implies? There are two ways of answering yes to this question: partial and wholehearted. The partial acceptance of this offer is not hard to come to; we all have the desire to seek the Father's will to some degree. But the wholehearted and unstinted response is quite another matter. In the face of well-known human limitations, mind alone is likely to be of little use. Only a genuine and trusting personal faith in the amazing promises of the Father can really free us to accept the privilege of the wholehearted doing of his will. "But I say to you in all sincerity: Unless you seek entrance into the kingdom with the faith and trusting dependence of a little child, you shall in no wise gain admission." (*1536:4)
Battle doubt with faith.
Are we capable of living as the Father asks us to? Jesus consistently taught that the ability to do the Father's will could not be self-attained. He always taught that such an ability was a gift, a bestowal, or an endowment, freely given by the Father to each of his children who sincerely desires it and who will, in faith, ask for it (see p. 1609). The Father never asks us to do the impossible. If we really trust him and decide to do as he asks, he will provide us with all the tools we require to accomplish his assignments. Just how this can be is not mind-comprehensible; these are spirit transactions and they transcend the capacity of our minds. Nevertheless, whoever sincerely desires to live the will of God and who will, by faith, accept the Father's gift of spiritual power, is certain to experience the reality of these promises. The chief barrier to this realization is doubt. "The believer has only one battle, and that is against doubt--unbelief." (*1766:4)
While the doing of the Father's will is accomplished by the endowments of the spirit, the purpose of this bestowal of ability is not the attainment of a life of static and blissful ease. When the power of doing God's will is given, it is for the actual doing of that will. It is certain that all who have the faith to accept this greatest of all gifts will immediately be assigned to the Father's service. It is equally certain that this service will be difficult and demanding. Yet at the same time there may also be experienced the "peace which passes understanding." Difficulty and tranquillity might seem an incompatible combination when examined by the logic of mind.
But in the faith experience of those who have chosen to wholeheartedly seek and do the Father's will these elements often find an inexplicable and transforming union. There is no knowing just where the Father's leading is going to take us, except to say that it will certainly lead down vigorous paths of genuine self-forgetfulness, wholehearted loving service, and divine assurance. "In entering the kingdom, you cannot escape its responsibilities or avoid its obligations, but remember: The gospel yoke is easy, and the burden of truth is light." (*1766:3)
Again, are we really interested in doing the Father's will? It is a commonplace observation that human beings, given a choice, will focus their attention upon matters which interest them. Some people have an interest in sports, so they devote considerable time to thinking and talking about sports. Others are interested in music or movies, and they think and talk about these things.
But who consistently directs attention to the Father's will? Do you observe that when students of The URANTIA Book gather together, whether for study or fellowship, that the frequent topic of serious inquiry is the knowing and doing of the Father's will? And in our family life, with our close friends, or with passing acquaintances, do we often consider and discuss the Father's will?
Jesus was always thinking and talking about the Father's will, and we are called to follow him. Can we expect to make progress in this domain without giving regular and genuine attention to it? "Even to approach the knowing of a divine personality, all of man's personality endowments must be wholly consecrated to the effort; halfhearted, partial devotion will be unavailing." (*30:4)
Those of us who have, at this early date, been brought to The URANTIA Book are a truly blessed generation. We have been called out to be champions for the Universal Father - our Father - the God of all creation. We have been offered the unparalleled opportunity to live the remainder of our lives as representatives of the Father, to know and do his will. Many of our fellows sit in darkness, in near complete ignorance of even the existence of this kind of life, but for us it is an immediate possibility. We have a matchless text to inspire and instruct us, we have a multiplicity of spiritual forces to guide and sustain us, and we have each other. What more do we require?
It is hoped that future days will witness a growing preoccupation on our part with the question of knowing and doing the Father's will. This inexhaustible subject sorely needs the attention of sincere and interested sons and daughters. It is also hoped that we shall learn to use more of our time together to encourage one another to go forward on this endless journey, to continually grow in our willingness and ability to always say: "It is my will that your will be done." The doing of the Father's will, then, is first a question of wholehearted desire, next of the faith acceptance of spiritual power, and lastly of continued seeking of the Father's way.
The will of God can be done by anyone who truly desires to do it. Would the Father ask us to do that which we were incapable of doing? But we must be willing to seek his guidance continually and to rely upon him completely. If we truly want to love and serve, if we really wish to work for the establishment of the unseen Father's universal family, then we can and will be empowered to do so. This empowering is the rebirth of the spirit; one is born again. Everything becomes new. These are the liberated sons and daughters of God, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the free and liberated members of the infinite family of the Universal Father.
Helena Sprague The Urantian Journal of Urantia Brotherhood Winter, 1977
A major component of human development is fear, both the instinctive responses coming out of the dim ages of the struggle for physical survival, and the learned reactions of our cultural endowment, particularly psychosocial, intellectual, and sometimes spiritual. The URANTIA Book teachings about fear and growth are both profound and practical. They can be considered from four viewpoints.
First, fear is a universal experience of the creatures of time and space. There are racial variations: Adamic children are not so subject to fear as the children of evolution. Personal experience confirms the universality of fear; no one has been free of it. Simple scrutiny turns it up in all arenas of human activity, among them business, politics, economics, family, the arts, recreation, international relations. In some human behavior fear may be subtle. Take elitism, for instance: it is not popular to be "elitist"; most of us react negatively to this, yet I submit some would find the array of personalities in the universe- sovereigns and princes and staffs and workers elitist. There is a simple and complete difference between mortals and supermortals in reaction to a pyramidal organization chart: their response involves no fear.
Second, certain fears are destructive. Fear girds us for fight or flight (if we are healthy), and inherent in these is the considerable chance of poor decisions. "A false fear of sacredness has prevented religion from being safeguarded by common sense. Fear of the authority of the sacred writing of the past effectively prevents the honest souls of today from accepting the new light . . . " (*1768:6)
"The Jewish leaders were increasingly blinded by fear and prejudice.... When men shut off the appeal to the spirit that dwells within them there is little that can be done to modify their attitude." (*1672:6)
About our seraphic guardians: "The only emotion actuating you which is somewhat difficult for them to comprehend is the legacy of animal fear that bulks so large in the mental life of the average inhabitant of Urantia. The angels really find it hard to understand why you will so persistently allow your higher intellectual powers, even your religious faith, to be so dominated by fear, so thoroughly demoralized by the thoughtless panic of dread and anxiety." (*1243:3)
The third viewpoint is that fear is ultimately constructive. One of the inevitabilities asks, "Is hope-the grandeur of trust- desirable? Then human existence must constantly be confronted with insecurities and recurrent uncertainties." (*51:7)
Fear was the entering wedge into man's consciousness for the development of his spiritual nature. "Ghost fear was the fountainhead of all world religion." (*961:3)
A Brilliant Evening Star tells us that ghost fear led to recognition of higher types of spirits, later to dual spiritism, (good and bad spirits), then to supermortal forces that were consistent in behavior. He emphasizes that " . . . this was one of the most momentous discoveries of truth in the entire history of the evolution of religion and in the expansion of human philosophy." (*961:7)
The same Evening Star of Nebadon writes: "Primitive religion prepared the soil of the human mind, by the powerful and awesome force of false fear, for the bestowal of a bona fide spiritual force of supernatural origin, the Thought Adjuster. And the divine Adjusters have ever since labored to transmute God-fear into God-love." (*957:3)
Fourth, the antidote for fear is faith. "The feelings of insecurity arising from the fear of personality isolation in the universe should be antidoted by faith contemplation of the Father and the attempted realization of the Supreme." (*1616:5)
Dealing with our fears which are personal, often private, sometimes lonely experiences, requires effort, overt action. "The Thought Adjusters would like to change your feelings of fear to convictions of love and confidence; but they cannot mechanically and arbitrarily do such things; that is your task." (*1192:4)
Jesus' whole mission really related to faith; his revelation of God to man a gift to make man's faith more possible for spiritually immature beings; his revelation of man to God an inspiring example of practical ways confused humans might relate to Deity.
Jesus knew no fear; he was prudent, and though fearless, he was not willing to take unproductive risks. " . . . courage was the very heart of his teachings. 'Fear not' was his watchword . . . " (*1582:2)
For us to translate this directive into action, The URANTIA Book gives practical recommendations: ". . . forthwith, will this faith vanquish fear of men by the compelling presence of that new and all-dominating love of your fellows. " (* 1438: 1)
And, "In executing those decisions which deliver you from the fetters of fear, you literally supply the psychic fulcrum on which the Adjuster may subsequently apply a spiritual lever of uplifting and advancing illumination." (*1192:4)
All decisions can be evaluated by whether they are fear or faith inspired, because fear and faith are two fundamental techniques by which we deal with reality. Both are necessary for survival.
God is the greatest human experience. He is within us disclosing all that we can absorb, and the limit of this comprehension is contingent upon the quality of our faith, that quality which is measured by our desire to comprehend.
Our Universal Father gives us all that we have, all that we are and all that we may become. He asks of us growth toward perfection, growth to be nurtured by faith and actualized in the Supreme.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Service of The Urantia Book Fellowship
Revitalization And Transformation Within The Family
Sally Schlundt A Presentation given at the 1981 conference of Urantia Brotherhood Snowmass, Colorado -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction
I prefer the title of this talk being the revitalization and transformation within the family instead of the revitalization and transformation of the family because it places the emphasis and responsibility of improvement on the family itself. I believe that for any transformation to take place the initiative has to come from within--not as the result of outside forces. In order to adequately understand how we can revitalize and transform the family we need to understand first just what family is -- assess its function and value. Along with this we need to take a look at the current sickness that's plaguing the family and discuss the possible causes. Note that I refer to it as a sickness because that's exactly what I believe it to be--not a demise. Family is in a state of transition and we need to redefine it -- come to understand it in the light of a new era -- and answer to the challenge and responsibility required to fulfill its function in today's world.
Family, what is it? Dr. Charles Stinnette at the Graduate Seminary of Philips University in Oklahoma defines family in the following way, "It is a world of persons, a cosmos of meanings and common understanding which provides a center for unity and conflict, for meeting and withdrawal, for the shaping of identity and for the birth and nurture of our essential humanness.
The mode in which family is a whole, and yet provides for diversity is the heartbeat of healthy living. Further, the family is a social organism which is propelled, not alone by physiological function, but most importantly by inter-personal events. Here is the foundational cornerstone for adequately understanding the family."
In reinforcement of that statement, The Urantia Book describes the universe as a huge growing arena that is set up in such a way that it unerringly activates our individual growth--resulting mainly from the interaction of other beings--through the socialization process. We start small at first (we couldn't handle anything bigger) and gradually work our way up to larger and more diverse associations. Thus the smaller manageable unit-the family--is the primary social medium in our lives through which we grow and extend the learning it facilitates. On page 1776 we read, "Marriage, with its manifold relations, is best designed to draw forth those precious impulses and those higher motives which are indispensable to the development of a strong character." (*1776:1)
Growth requires encounters with people. Evidently we wouldn't grow much on our own, if at all, so we need the stimulation of continually bumping up against other people. And characteristically growth doesn't occur without conflict. And families, due to their intense degree of intimacy, provide the necessary rich soil. Contrary to how many of us feel and think, we're not here to simply get along smoothly, we're here to grow vigorously and deeply. That's God's chief objective in having us here and that doesn't occur in environmental ease (as The Urantia Book so aptly puts it). In fact The Urantia Book describes the partnership between man and woman as basically antagonistic--a pairing of opposites both complemental and necessary. It's symbolic of nature's way to capitalize on differences --to utilize and benefit from the union of diversity.
Also found in The URANTIA Book: "The enforced associations of family life stabilize personality and stimulate its growth through the compulsion of necessitous adjustment to other and diverse personalities." (*942:2)
Family Undervalued
Ironically, though, in view of all this importance and along with being the oldest and most prevalent institution in our lives, family remains a most grossly undervalued institution.
Parenting is the most important job on this planet and yet it is the least prepared for and the least appreciated profession of all. Even so, family is the most influential institution in our lives--shaping us and as a consequence, in turn, shaping through us the society in which we live. The family is our primary learning institution, where we learn about life, about the universe, and about the very nature of God. To the point: "The family is the fundamental unit of fraternity in which parents and children learn those lessons of patience, altruism, tolerance, and forbearance which are so essential to the realization of brotherhood among all men." (*841:8)
It is frightening, however, that although family is essential for the over-all benefit of individuals and society, we are witnessing what appears to be a general tide of family disintegration and with it a great deal of society's moral fiber. Why is this happening? There are many opinions but usually they only scratch the surface. For the problems of the family are not exclusive to the family but rather symptomatic of an all-pervasive cultural problem.
The single most important influence on our contemporary culture -our lives--has been the dawning of industrialization with all of its consequent effects upon every aspect of life, from science and technology through economics, education, politics, and religion. We have time to focus on only a few key factors. It has been through the advances of science and technology that the basic function of the family has been altered in its very nature, and so its stability shattered. Not only has technology provided us with the inventions making it possible to travel farther and therefore extending our sense of personal territory, but it has also given us less reason to stay and work together.
Families had largely been cohesive because they were functional and necessary for society, controlled in turn by social norms and mores. But the functions that held families together and gave them meaning are no longer pertinent in today's culture--science and technology have largely taken care of that, cutting families free from their original or traditional working responsibilities. We, as families, are not in the same symbiotic relationship with society we once were.
All this new-found freedom is of little comfort because we're losing our sense of significance, and instead of society depending upon families any more we find families and their members hopelessly dependent upon society's larger, less personal institutions. As the family has become less and less necessary for the physical well-being of the society the individual suffers. Probably the most disastrous effect industrialization has had on the individual is this diminishing sense of significance--it's one of our greatest human needs--if we don't have that, we have little reason for existing.
Although society has largely controlled the individual, it is nonetheless an invention of the individual--an extension of self-perpetuation. Society is a tool devised by the individual to assure survival; institutions were devised to fulfill certain specialized functions. In the past, all institutions, including the family, were engaged in common reciprocal serving --the family served the other institutions and the institutions, in turn, served the family. This interdependence, this healthy symbiosis, has been broken as other institutions have loomed ever larger, resulting in the family becoming irrelevant as well as powerless. Since much of the family's function has been replaced an unhealthy imbalance has been created. Rather than the individual being a necessary part of a viable institution any more (whether that be a family or a small business in the community) his chief means of contributing has been reduced to that of a consumer. He has become depersonalized as institutions have grown into depersonalized giants--his own particular selfhood and personal skills unimportant.
However, industrialization itself is not the culprit. Rather we are victims of ourselves, in how we handle the new advances. For example, one invention that has radically changed the face of the family day-to-day lifestyle is the television set. It has been blamed vehemently for interfering or replacing intimately shared family activities. Howard Steing, Clinical Professor of Medical Psychiatric Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma, considers the use of the TV a symbolic expression of American culture. He maintains that TV is as much a person in the household as any real person--a person that captures our attention so totally that it obliterates reality going on around us. This is no accident, for he asserts that we actually engage TV to replace close personal contact, to escape from the commitments and sorrows existing with real associations. TV is the optimum and ideal friend, filling the void, giving us a sense of living and personal contact, willingly giving all and asking nothing in return. He maintains that in the sense that TV actually isolates us from real contact--separating us from real socialization--it's an addiction every bit as harmful as alcoholism or drug abuse.
Since TV has become a cultural norm it offers one the luxury of having the ultimate sanctioned distraction. These norms make self-indulgence--rights without responsibility--convenient and justifiable. Sadly, the irony of it all is that TV both fills the emptiness and serves to perpetuate it; it is symptomatic of the very isolation we use it to overcome, and so symbolic of a vast range of depersonalizing influences. "TV, though," he goes on to say "doesn't create or destroy relationships--it is not the villain--it is a matter instead of how the television is used in the relationships." Instead of disrupting family intimacy, for instance, it can be used as a means for family sharing -- used as an extension or means of socializing." He notes: "Long before TV existed, there was plenty of generational segmentation, role specialization, fragmentation, and compartmentalization in the American family; TV simply was placed in the service of these tendencies, further disrupting inter-personal ties that were already fractured."
Looking more deeply, then, the problem has little to do with actual by-products of industrialization but rather its associated values. In an essay written by Dr. Peter Kountz and Rev. Douglas Peterson, entitled, Marriage, Career and Disintegration of the American Dream, the point is made: "The work/career component is the greatest danger to the American way of life--not liberation or the failure of the church to provide adequate moral guidance. With technology came a new set of values; speed and efficiency came to be valued as work was moved from home to the office and factory in order to bring workers and materials together in the most efficient way. . Because of its astonishing growth and development through technology, contemporary American society has come to value progress and upward mobility as well as efficiency, productivity, and technical expertise. Americans have in this way become almost exclusively committed to the values of the technological, work-oriented American Dream -- (ironically though) it is precisely the American Dream that continues to confuse and frustrate 20th century American culture and its primary institutions. It is a lure enticing us into the belief that its attainment will bring joy and pleasure. Like the fish that takes the bait, our frenzied pursuit of the lure turns into bitter disappointment, mistrust and frustration." And they make clear the effect this pursuit has on the stability of the family: "The value of family staying and playing together has been shattered by the dozens of individual interests that scatter the family members to the four corners of their community."
In the past, functional, economic, and social reasons provided the necessary cement that held families together, giving them meaning and justifying their existence. But today these reasons are no longer relevant and consequently family is floundering. It has been set free from its original purpose and is presently at a loss.
Today mores, values, and ethics are all designed for the maintenance and perpetuation of the industrial complex. Industrial survival is society's primary concern, leaving the individual and family expendable. So the active values in our times are personally disabling. They encourage uniformity rather than individuality, dependency rather than self-maintenance or self-motivation. Corporate institutions have values other than human values. In our increasingly depersonalized society, market values or profits come before people. We have become victims of our own Frankenstein monster.
In order to offset this direction the family must once again become a viable contributor; a balance needs to be restored so that family is serving society again and in a way that only family can. The positive side of industrialization is that in many parts of the world basic survival needs are largely being taken care of by industry, leaving the family free to contribute in a new way. The stage is now set for a higher evolutionary contribution, therefore family is at a point where it has the opportunity to find deeper reasons for existing--to be as functional as yesterday's family was to an earlier era.
But the problem and solution are a matter of values and presently we lack a viable value system -- what value systems we do have are either hopelessly out-moded, irrelevant, or corrupt. We are presently experiencing moral confusion. The fast pace of a radically changing world has given us little time to adjust and redefine our purpose. Consequently, we're at a point in history where we've gained freedom and don't know what to do with it; we've been socially regulated for so long that we don't know what to do on our own responsibly. Many of the standard moral codes have broken down.
Margaret Mead in Culture and Commitment, explains that we are suffering a crisis of faith--we have lost faith in religion, political ideology, and in science, and are therefore deprived of every kind of security. She maintains that this is a world-wide problem because of what she calls the electronic network--that combined with air travel connects everyone together finally--leaving no one in cultural isolation. Everyone is now exposed to other beliefs, other norms, and mores. We are no longer limited by our small cultural scope. Our old standards and values are undermined by the awareness of other standards and values --we don't just believe blindly anymore.
Freedom with Responsibility
Today we need a new ethic. We need an ethic centered around human values again, one to counter the dehumanizing values of an industrial era--values we've adopted that interrupt genuine human relating. An ethic, though, that moves forward to basics, not back, because it's a new world today and we need values based on a design suitable for today's world. Our boundaries have extended beyond our families, our communities, our cities, and even our nations. Carl Sagan, in his book Cosmos, points out the importance of adopting a global perspective today, that is, "of broadening the circle of those we love. . . to include the whole human community." We need to become a world community based on a stance of cooperative unity dedicated to the over-all benefit of all humanity. For instance, Virginia Satir, in her book Peoplemaking, suggests that we use power with a different aim in mind. She writes, "I need to use my power for my growth and your growth. This kind of use of power doesn't exclude human values; it enhances them." We need an ethic that enables and frees people to themselves and one another--utilizing skills for the benefit of all society--of all the world. An ethic both respectful of the needs for personal freedom while at the same time affirming each individual's responsibility to the whole.
Eric Hoffer, the well known longshoreman philosopher, understands the nature of this new ethic needed today: "As things are now, it may well be the survival of the species will depend upon the capacity to foster a boundless capacity for compassion." Family, because of its close intimate associations, is the primary institution to embody this new ethic. The family is the most competent institution capable of activating a capacity for intimacy and sensitivity which in turn provides for the rounded development of character and personality. Only family generates intimately-caring individuals; it's the only institution looking out for truly individual concerns.
Ultimately it's the family that's capable of freeing people to themselves, one another, and to God. In effect, other institutions are depersonalized. It's the only institution that can create love. To quote my husband, "institutions cannot love--only people love." The family institution is the sole exception, for when it functions as it should it alone fosters deep intimate, personal love!
I'm convinced that the main problem of the family today (and therefore our culture) is simply that the family doesn't appreciate itself--its importance--and fails to notice the enormity of its influence. According to The Urantia Book, the family is far from being insignificant; it earns the lone distinction, in fact, of being ". . man's supreme evolutionary acquirement and civilization's only hope of survival." (*943:2) Ironically, on the very institution that is least understood and appreciated rests to a very large extent the solution to the manifold problems that plague the world today. The family and its capacity for growth and change is the ultimate educator in society and finally the universe. Families are the teaching centers of real education and models for all social structures. It is the family from which we learn or don't learn individual responsibility, cooperation, love and caring, fairness, justice, compassion, forgiveness, and grace. It is from the family that we learn how to regard and finally treat our fellow man. As found in The Urantia Book, the family is absolutely essential for revealing the true character of God.
"The relationship of child and parent is fundamental to the essential concept of the Universal Father. ." (*516:3)
Jesus regarded the family so highly, in fact, that "the family occupied the very center of Jesus' philosophy of life--here and hereafter." (*1581:1) Jesus never under-estimated the value of family--he saw family as representative of the highest levels of existence --referring even to the kingdom as a divine family. Jesus said: ". . (the) Father has directed the creation of male and female, and it is the divine will that men and women should find their highest service and consequent joy in the establishment of homes for the reception and training of children, in the creation of whom these parents become copartners with the Makers of heaven and earth." (*1839:5) By what he said and how he lived Jesus elevated the union between man and woman and the subsequent family to a level far exceeding its status of that era and even today's era. He gave meaning to the statement that, "The family is man's greatest purely human achievement. . . " (*939:3)
Families are not only educational institutions for the members that comprise them but also educators of society. Families are essential as carriers of culture and instruments of change. In The Urantia Book it's emphasized how all-important this function is: "Society itself is the aggregated structure of family units. Individuals are very temporary as planetary factors--only families are continuing agencies in social evolution. The family is the channel through which the river of culture and knowledge flows from one generation to another." (*931:2) Family is basic for passing on the cultural torch, giving continuity to social evolutionary patterns. Families are the carriers of society, without which society would stagnate. In The Urantia Book it reads, "Almost everything of lasting value in civilization has its roots in the family." (*765:5)
Dr. Charles Stinnette highlights and summarizes this all-important function of family: "(Family), it is both a conservator and mediator of human value and a prophetic center which translates a cry of distress into a summons for help and change. The family is destroyed from within whenever it ignores either of these mandates. Its function as a center for prophetic change gives meaning and import to its function as the nurturing center of civilization."
Yes, far from being insignificant, the family's responsibility is indispensable. How, then, do we proceed in this vital reconstruction? Family building is at an all time low --it's becoming less and less an attractive venture for people. In their combined book Here's to the Family, Betty and Joel Wells analyze the dilemma this way: "The husband and wife who enter into familyhood--that is, have children--are offered little by way of preparatory education or professional training for what is surely one of the most complex and challenging jobs in the world. Nor are they offered the same sort of support which surrounding institutions used to provide. To get married, stay married, run a household, raise healthy, well-adjusted children to the point of incipient maturity is not the easy, automatic, natural thing it was once supposed to be. In fact, not very many people, when you take the population at large, are able to do it. Yet when they are successful, there's no Nobel or Pulitzer prize awarded; no cover story in Time to celebrate the achievement in the face of odds that grow longer each year."
Parenting, no doubt, is a thankless task today. Family is no longer regarded with unquestioned respect -- no longer considered the pace-setter and upholder of right but, instead, is blamed for everything--blamed for the ills of both the individual and society. For that matter, Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, forecasted a world where family would be entirely obliterated due to its supposed negative and immoral influence on people. We are understandably apprehensive about entering parenthood any more. Thanks to psychology we've been made aware of the risks. We are conscientious about parenting now in a new way--having been made aware of the damage parents can inflict. We truly want to do the right thing, our intentions are right but we find ourselves so overwhelmed by the constant onslaught of diverse viewpoints on child-rearing that we end up numb by the sheer confusion and ineffective by the inevitable guilt!
To complicate matters further, parental authority is increasingly being undercut today by the intervention of other institutions. We hear today of the rising apathy among parents, that increasingly parents are shirking their responsibility. I believe there are such instances but I also believe strongly that most parents are interested, extremely interested, in their children and if anything, they feel at a loss--they doubt their own competence as parents. I feel parents have to like themselves again and, therefore, like their role. "Parent" has become a four letter word in our society and that has to change. Furthermore, no one is more fitting for the job.
Other institutions only know a portion of the child's over-all needs. It's the parents who must take their rightful place again as the chief experts in the raising of their children. In The Urantia Book we read: ". . .any attempt to shift parental responsibility to state or church will prove suicidal to the welfare and advancement of civilization." (*941:8) Moreover, on a neighboring planet, as a positive example, children are under full control of their parents.
What this means is that today, parents need to retrieve their full responsibility and authority once again, responsibility mainly as teachers. In The Urantia Book we find that teaching and child-rearing are in fact inseparable. Education today, unfortunately, is regarded as only occurring in certain specified places and by certain specified people. Actually, though, learning is no more a consequence of organized education than religion is a consequence of organized religion. Learning is a part of life--it is life, in fact.
Parenting Opportunity
Family is the arena for personal and interpersonal development. Family is a combination of elements that we require to grow. Even Jesus had to experience being both child and parent in family. We read: "No surviving mortal, midwayer, or seraphim may ascend to Paradise, attain the Father, and be mustered into the Corps of the Finality without having passed through that sublime experience of achieving parental relationship to an evolving child of the worlds or some other experience analogous and equivalent thereto. The relationship of child and parent is fundamental to the essential concept of the Universal Father and his universe children.
Therefore does such an experience become indispensable to the experiential training of all ascenders." (*516:3) We need the opportunity to parent, not just for our children's sake but for ours as well. We need the addition that children bring to an intimate association.
It's common in our society to exclude children from our adult lives, to see them as a becoming, a "future," as Maria Montessori puts it, and therefore we segregate ourselves from them.
Children, though, provide us with a necessary balance, something we wouldn't have otherwise. Children are not merely a becoming, but part of our very essential and necessary socialization process. Maria Montessori further points out that by cutting ourselves off from children as we do, we are consequently severing ourselves from a necessary part of ourselves and ultimately our society. We are only functioning and growing at half our potential capacity. She explains it as follows, "There is in us, finally, a peculiar emptiness, a blindness we have built into our spirit and our civilization. Something like a blind spot in the depths of the eye, this blind spot is in the depths of life." Dave, my husband, once said, "Children are incredibly precious because of their relative rarity in the total ascension career--but in our society they are largely cast aside. They should be our teachers; as God learns from us, so we learn from our children."
There's a beautiful book entitled: Whole Child Whole Parent, written by Polly Berends. Here is what she has to say about the education of parenthood: "It's an existential fact that most of us need our children. There are few people walking this earth who learn the arts of motherliness and fatherliness without children, and they are very wise. But most of us benefit from the big push our children give us toward the discovery of these qualities-- qualities which are absolutely necessary to our fulfillment and of more lasting value than most of the lessons of childhood. We learn them for the sake of our children, but they benefit us most of all. Once we have learned to be truly motherly and fatherly (we need of course, to become both) we will always be much happier.
The gain is not the having of children; it is the discovery of love and how to be loving. The foundation of love is the knowledge of goodness. The qualities of this love are receptivity, patience, innocence, humility, trust, gratitude, generosity, understanding, and the desire to be good for goodness' sake." The most moving insight was when I read the following statement: "Parenthood is just the world's most intensive course in love."
Not only do we disclose the true nature of our Father's love to our children as is so aptly pointed out in The Urantia Book but it's within the family that we learn love. We really don't understand the full nature of love until we've had the opportunity to parent.
A perspective of love is basic, any method (for instance in child-rearing) is secondary and inconsequential to love; if you don't have love, any method in the world won't work, and by the same token, if you do have the love any method in the world will work. This was the wonder behind Jesus as parent; it wasn't his technique per se -- his technique was love-based, love-expressed. In addition we read, " . .the entire religious experience of such a child is largely dependent on whether fear or love has dominated the parent-child relationship." (*1013:6)
The ultimate goal of parenting should be to free the individual to himself and to God; to allow him to teach himself, actually, to learn from life like we all do, through the instrument of experience; to formulate his own truth. Polly Berends added a dimension to the well-used quote by Jesus: ". . .except you become as a little child you shall never enter the kingdom." She goes on, "He wasn't talking about cute or little or helpless or ignorant: he was talking about the child's most outstanding ability, the ability to learn." It's the child's wide-eyed and open receptivity to the ongoing and ever-revealing truth that makes him a virtual sponge for truth. It's this condition of always questioning that characterizes the child so well.
I read somewhere that adults are collaborators in life with children--not experts--but fellow learners, because learning occurs always, everywhere and with everybody. Our role has to do with "...assisting the child to win the battle of life." (*941:7) Everyone in a household as equal participant, working in collaboration with one another, each empowered with his own personality and sense of responsibility is what true freedom is all about --it's the way of the universe. Jesus' family was so designed. It is true with the Father's family.
In asking ourselves how best to parent, we need only look to God as our model parent. In his silent leading he offers himself as a patiently gentle guide striking a perfect balance of involvement. Always is God present but never overwhelmingly so. And by never imposing his will he sets and nurtures the conditions for the development of true inner discipline.
In conclusion, even though this is a time of great insecurity for the individual and the family, I see this as a magnificent opportunity for all humankind. One way to view it is to see ourselves being weaned from an outer social control, to an inner greater control.
This current narcissitic period we're witnessing is not only understandable but maybe even necessary before we discover something else. It's like being weaned from the bottle and resorting to our thumb for awhile. We're in a period of self-discovery--of finding our separateness. After all, that's where God ultimately finds us--alone--he relates to individuals, not groups as such. The challenge now is greater than ever before and that's really what's scary about it; the control is no longer out there--it's up to us now--we have to find the answers and direction within ourselves.
And what does this say about family? People as single individuals functioning autonomously, acting out of personal decisions motivated by choice, are far more cohesive and advantageous for the good of the group than the old family group based on necessity alone and controlled by society. Our families and therefore society is many times more solid and effective when people are committed to each other out of choice and governed by their own set of values born out of a personal relationship to God. This is what the age offers us. The Urantia Book is a book of this new age--a vision of the idea of God-control.
"Families and societies are small and large versions of one another. Put together all the current existing families and you have society," says Virginia Satir in her book Peoplemaking. Because of this fact any changes occurring in the family have a direct influence on society. Families today have the opportunity of revitalizing with a new significance by transforming into small model communities, communities of individuals committed to growth. What a marvelous and different world we would have if everyone in it were committed to growth -- People choosing to be together--embracing involvement with one another again but for higher reasons--based on the principles of dynamic growth.
Families are being called forth to be in the business of building the kingdom right here on earth. To develop and improve human quality and to act as spawning grounds by which the world learns the essential values of the kingdom. On page 1777 we read: "And thus, if you can build up such trustworthy and effective small units of human association, when these are assembled in the aggregate, the world will behold a great and glorified social structure, the civilization of mortal maturity. Such a race might begin to realize something of your Master's ideal of 'peace on earth and good will among men.' While such a society would not be perfect or entirely free from evil, it would at least approach the stabilization of maturity." (*1777:2)
And finally, family is not an end in itself but a pattern, a fundamental pattern of human relating that needs to be realized increasingly right up through the planetary family towards universe family. Families are tiny microcosms of human relationships reflected on all universe levels--on page 369 we read of it being a reflection of the very universe structure itself. Family as pattern is the only institution that covers the entire range of evolutionary reality even to Paradise--the trinity for instance being the primary family. Its feet are in the earth but its head is in Paradise--no other institution can claim that!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Service of The Urantia Book Fellowship
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The ultimate mystery in theism is the problem of evil. How can one reconcile belief in an all-wise, all-good, and all-powerful God with the destructiveness of nature, the seemingly unjust and arbitrary suffering of people and animals, and social evils like Dachau, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki?
The history of religion is replete with attempts to answer this question. All of these theodicies have more or less failed. Finite attempts to understand such incongruities we recognize must go beyond our limited knowledge and find resolution in a transcendent leap of faith or voice the frustration of existential meaninglessness. Nevertheless, deep within human nature is the imperative to probe the mystery of ultimate questions century after century. Periodically, with the advent of new knowledge, past answers are glaring in their inadequacy.
We are entering the Space Age where new frames of reference are giving enhanced perspectives to ancient dilemmas. Traditional religious answers to the problem of evil are rooted in a geocentric and pre-scientific understanding of the nature of the universe. These prophets and seers of the past perceived great spiritual truths but understood them in terms which today are, at best, simplistic and at worst, erroneous in fact.
Carl Jung observes that human beings can suffer anything if they know its meaning. When contemporary humanity contemplates the cosmic picture now available to the growing edge of twentieth century planetary vision, there will be a far greater understanding and appreciation of the meaning of evil and suffering. Through the insights brought about by a more comprehensive view of universe reality we also intuit an enhanced perspective of the great truths and eternal purposes of an all-wise, all-good, and all-powerful Creator. As we discover that the imperfections of the finite universe are indigenous to the divine plan for evolving unique, experience-tested mortals with unimaginable potentials rather than some incapacity or deficiency of God, our entire conceptualization of imperfection and evil is transmuted into a life view of glorious opportunity and intriguing possibility.
Before we can comprehend the authentic meaning of human experience we need to understand the basic nature and methodology of reality. Without a view of the underlying dynamics of universe phenomena, the immediate experience and events of life may be grossly misunderstood and misinterpreted. The part gains true perspective when it is viewed in relation to the whole.
Our understanding of experience begins with an examination of the sources of knowledge. We have three basic sources of information: the perception of the material world, the awareness of our own inner consciousness, and the realization of values. Psychologically, therefore, we experience reality in three categories or forms: matter, mind, and value or spirit. We must know the nature and operational dynamics of these reality manifestations if we are to comprehend what is happening in our lives.
Our knowledge of the material world has exploded in modern times. We no longer live in the circumscribed, provincial, geocentric universe of our forefathers where the basic elements were thought to be earth, air, water, and fire. The cosmos in which we live is extensive beyond human imagination where distance is measured in millions of light years. There are billions of suns in our local Milky Way galaxy and billions of such galaxies exist in outer space. The microcosmic world of the molecule, the atom, and the quark is equally incomprehensible. Each breath we take contains a trillion trillion atoms and each atom is a complex universe of its own. Our astronomical-nuclear, material-energy continuum made up of physical materials and living organisms is billions of years old and is directed, controlled, and integrated by countless material-physiological mechanisms operating in an overall ecological system. As we look at this complex, many-faceted universe observing its many interacting laws and principles, one basic dynamic appears to dominate the entire cosmos: the evolutionary process. Whether we look at the formation of galaxies, the development of organisms, or the events and struggles of human society, evolution appears to be the key modus operandi of the universe. Nothing in universe function or human experience can be adequately understood apart from this underlying, indigenous dynamic conditioning all things.
How can we understand mind in which we psychologically live and move and have our being? Our knowledge of mind is still in its primitive stages. We must, therefore, understand it largely from the standpoint of experience and function. Although mind activity is related to electro-chemical activities, its universe function is all-encompassing. In the broadest sense the term "mind" can be applied to any control and guidance function which operates in things, mechanisms, organisms, or persons. Mind activity in the inorganic world is that energy function which produces the regulative behavior of matter. Those aspects of the nucleus of an atom which causes it to capture one electron (hydrogen) or ninety-two electrons (uranium) and to behave in a chemically characteristic manner is due to some regulative or mind characteristic of matter.
In the organic world, mind is that energy function which produces adaptive behavior. Here we see mind operating in differential levels of complexity starting with one cell organisms, proceeding through plant life to lower animals and reaching its highest expression in man.
Human mental activities culminate in self-consciousness, rational and creative thought, superconscious insights, and God-consciousness. These descriptions of mind function are, of course, abstractions because in nature mind and matter or body activities are inseparably linked.
While our scientific knowledge of mindal reality is in its infancy, our understanding of values and spiritual reality consists almost entirely in experiential discovery and philosophic conjecture. We are material beings endowed with minds through which we perceive truth, beauty, and goodness. We have a limited awareness of cosmic realities of a spiritual nature; we are lured and guided by a subliminal God-consciousness which at times focuses into conscious awareness to direct and transform our lives.
Faith must always transcend our knowledge if we are to grow and progress. We now stand at a moment in history when our creative future depends on our courage to follow the larger vistas of truth opening to us and leave behind the naive and provincial conceptions of spiritual reality held by most of our forefathers. The old simplistic three-story cosmology of heaven-earth-hell is hopelessly outdated in our contemporary astronomical universe. Experience suggests that there is a parallel between material reality and spiritual reality; the cosmos appears to be designed in an integrative, unifying manner. We must begin to conceptualize spiritual cosmology along the lines of our expanding knowledge of the celestial universe of astronomy. This spiritual cosmos must be perceived as even more limitless than our material universe and the substance of spiritual reality must be infinitely more complex and powerful than the microcosm of the atom.
If the spiritual universe has any meaning for human experience, there must be an analog in spiritual cosmology for the billions of galaxies of outer space. Just as we conjecture in our scientific hypothesizing that there are millions of inhabited planets, so must we assume the spiritual cosmos is populated with countless creations and myriads of intelligent beings and personalities with capacities and abilities quite beyond human imagination.
The integrative dynamics of such a material-mindal-spiritual cosmos appears to be structured and controlled by an overall operational system in which matter is ultimately subject to mind control and mind is eventually directed by spirit purposes, all functioning in the context of the evolutionary process. These, then, are the universe realities in which human experience takes place. To more adequately understand the suffering, ambiguities, and mysteries of the human condition, it is not only necessary to view our lives in the context of these realities but we must also deduce some conceptualization of the spiritual purposes for human destiny and the divine methodology for achieving those objectives.
We see from the nature of man that it was God's plan to create with intelligence, including truth, beauty" and goodness perception integrated by personality. Although we are conditioned by biological heredity factors, environmental conditions, and social-personal experience, basic in the purpose was to create mortals who had free will in value decisions and were autonomous in spiritual identity and destiny determination. To accomplish this objective we observe that God initiated an indigenous, creative evolutionary process involving physical mechanisms, biological organisms, and ecological systems which eventually produced intelligent beings of free will dignity and spiritual development potential. All of this evolutionary creation, although broadly directed by spiritual overcontrol, is entirely the outworking of natural laws, mechanisms, and processes.
The culmination of the divine plan was to provide for the inner motivation, the environmental stimuli, and spiritual guidance whereby these free and independent mortals, these material sons and daughters, could evolve immortal souls-- supermaterial or spiritual reality identies--which could survive the death of the material body and the chemical-electrical brain-mind. By following inner spiritual guidance these children of time through free will decisions and actions predicated on their sincere understanding of truth, beauty, and goodness (spiritual reality) may evolve living souls and transcend their material animal origins. This endogenous divine-human partnership factualizes the supermortal soul which at death can abandon the physical body as the cocoon is left behind by the emerging butterfly.
God's methodology in actualizing these creative purposes coincides with the world of human experience. Both the finite limitations of human nature and the imperfections of the material universe which serves as the stage of this divine-human drama are so structured because of the wise and perfect plan of the Universal Father, not because of any limitations or imperfections in the divine nature. God has established the conditions for fashioning a unique quality of universe personality--a being which could only be created by mortals of free will capacity participating in their own growth toward perfection. Such persons will be quite different and have many potentials not possessed by beings arbitrarily created perfect.
Evolving such indigenous and innate qualities of character requires certain inevitabilities of environmental conditions. If evolutionary mortals are to develop courage, then must they live amid surroundings that necessitate struggling with hardships and danger in order to survive and effect favorable conditions for living. If hope is to evolve in human consciousness, then must man be constantly confronted with insecurities and uncertainties. In order to establish the love of truth in the human heart one must live in a world where error is present and the evils of falsehood experienced. Unselfishness is acquired in human experience when we repeatedly discover the unhappiness brought about by an ego continually clamoring for pleasure, honor, and recognition. Humankind would be unable to develop the spiritual qualities of love and service unless the evils of hatred are experienced and there were the anxieties and emptiness of the egocentric life to forsake. Evolutionary man must live in an environment of relative and potential evil to experientially be certain about and indigenously acquire the higher spiritual realities of the universe through personal freedom of choice.
In addition to these environmental stimuli of imperfection the Creative Process inculcated into human motivation a hierarchy of developmental values" insightfully described by Abraham Maslow. Beginning with the biological and safety needs, proceeding through the social, self-esteem, and independence deficiency needs to the self-actualizing and transcending meta needs, human nature is dominated by the urge to grow toward spiritual reality achievement: truth, beauty, and goodness identification.
Capping and guiding this broad-based environmental education and motivational directionalization the Universal Father has placed his own Spiritual Presence in the superconscious mind of man. With all of these potentials for transcending our animal heritage we are given sufficient freedom to shape our own destiny. Through personal decision and action in this human-divine partnership we have the opportunity of evolving souls or reality identities which will no longer need the material scaffolding mechanism which brought it into being.
As we view this finite universe of designed imperfection, with spiritual overcontrol, we see that it is fashioned to operate largely as a closed educational system whereby human beings have the opportunity to evolve a quality of being which is supermaterial. Here through identity formation and action spiritual realities such as truth, beauty, goodness, love, and righteousness become the dominant aspects of being. When this takes place we become more God-conscious and more real and effective as persons.
This transformation, usually so gradual that it is unconscious, takes place in the, so called, natural world. The old religious dichotomy of the natural and the supernatural is an illusion resulting from a lack of knowledge of how God acts in the finite universe. It may be meaningful to speak of material, mindal, or spiritual reality but anything which the creative action of God precipitates in any of these categories is an indigenous, lawful, or "natural" event. In the finite and material cosmos God maintains an immanent, endogenous presence and control. We sense his presence largely by the inference of faith insight. Even in the one place where we have a direct and personal experience of God, our inner consciousness, his presence in our superconscious minds is an immanent presence. All spiritual ministrations to finite beings must be a downstepped or immanent type of ministry. This is the essence of the incarnation message.
All this means that God does not relate with us as a cosmic puppet master nor as an anthropomorphic trouble shooter that we must call on or plead with to change the realities of creation and experience or shield us from problems and suffering. The design and purpose of finite creation is to encourage and enable us to meet and cope with the problems, frustrations, and tragedies of mortal experience. God's purpose for our lives is to help us evolve into the spiritually mature type of beings that are stimulated by perplexities, frustration, and suffering and who believe that in partnership with God all things eventually work together for good.
Between the hammers of anxiety and suffering and the anvil of necessity God is helping us to develop into strong and resilient personalities who can cope with imperfection and evil through our own resources as his finite sons and daughters. This requires a life predicated on courage, invigorated by hardships, and inspired by divine fellowship and guidance.
In view of these universe realities and divine purposes for human existence, we see that our traditional use of prayer in the hope of escaping evil or suffering has often been simplistic and immature. While such childish use of prayer may comfort the human mind and sensitize it for the reception of spiritual truth, twentieth century humanity would do well to engage in more intelligent forms of prayer.
Prayer is not a technique of magic nor a way to enlist divine help to alter nature or arbitrarily shield us from suffering and evil. Divine supplication cannot be used to escape facing the hard realities of human experience and soul growth or avoid expending rigorous effort in facing the problems of life. Since God has chosen to relate in a personal way with man almost exclusively in the realm of mind and consciousness, praying for the change or delivery of material things is not reality oriented. Human life is lived in the context of a natural world order which is not ordinarily miraculously modified as the result of prayer. The divine purpose of such a seemingly closed natural system is to require man to grapple with the problems of survival and the opportunities of soul growth through the use of his own resources.
Prayer, rather, is a mighty psychological-spiritual aid in developing such resilient, effective, and spiritually mature personalities. Communion with God is a major resource for struggling with and eventually mastering the planetary human situation. Through prayer we establish a fellowship with the Indwelling Presence of the Universal Father which undergirds, sustains, and inspires us as we wrestle with the problems and challenges of life. Since the Spirit of God is resident in the human mind we not only develop a partnership in our soul evolving adventure but when our human resources are exhausted in this struggle we can and should seek divine insight, guidance, and direction in finding a way to solve our human dilemma.
When we are courageous in facing reality, have exhausted our human resources and make a wholehearted decision to follow the Father's will and way such living faith prayers are reality oriented and efficacious. In these situations when we experience our existential finitude and impotence and yet do not surrender to spiritual doubt and despair unusual things happen. We discover fresh sources of comfort and inner peace which sustain us in the midst of chaos and tragedy. At times when the human situation looks bleak and foreboding fortuitous events happen, inexplicable contingencies take place, the form of reality changes. These experiences are always mysterious. Were they simply chance happenings or the result of spiritual ministry? They defy objective analysis and elude logical and rational explanation.
With this view of universe reality as a background, let us focus on some of the aspects of the problem of evil in human experience. We see the divine plan designed the finite universe as an imperfect creation which is, in the main, a closed evolutionary system where indigenous laws and mechanisms operate instead of direct Deity control. This self-limitation of God is basic to the actualization of a great and good universe plan to evolve in mortal man a unique quality of being. Through rigorous experience, often involving trial and error learning, we are making decisions and creating life styles which are evolving souls that are sui generis in the universe.
Man is actually participating in his own creative growth toward spiritual maturity. Starting at the bottom of the universe and experiencing growth from the lowest form of life having truth perception to the eventual perfection of human potentials, we will possess an experiential appreciation of reality, a functional wisdom, impossible to any beings created perfect.
Experience is a finite quality which always adds to and alters all other forms of universe reality. Through the educational process encountered in the vicissitudes of human experience the creative evolutionary process is forging out of man the beginnings of a noble, strong, and thoroughly experienced being whose potentials transcend our fondest dreams. Human anxiety and sorrow, our trials and suffering, are just as much a part of a wise divine plan of universe education as the lessons of childhood, the rigors of school days, and the psychic suffering of adolescence are necessary in developing character in our contemporary family life. There is historical, scientific, and experiential evidence which gives considerable support to this purposeful view of the problem of suffering and evil.
Nonetheless, many troubling questions remain unanswered regarding catastrophic and irrational aspects of the problem of evil. Why do the innocent suffer? How does one make sense out of mass destruction and horrendous pain which, in themselves, seem to serve no constructive purpose? These are problems to which theists down through centuries have, in the main, failed to find rational answers. Probably the closest we can come to discovering a meaningful answer to this enigma is to again refer to the reality picture previously presented.
God has a glorious plan for lowly man that required the creation of a finite universe of imperfection which operates largely as a closed system. Such self-limitation by God eventuates inevitable evil and involves great risk. The Universal Father in his great love and desire to share as much of himself with other beings as possible initiated the finite creation in perfect wisdom knowing its wonderful culmination and supremely confident that his immanence and over-control in the evolutionary universe would eventually overcome all breakdowns and catastrophies which might beset the divine plan.
Let us look at some of the risks which such a self-contained finite creation involves. First of all the creation of limited atomic and molecular, matter in an imperfectly balanced ecological system of this evolutionary universe results in periodic upheavals of nature. The inherent balance and control forces and mechanisms take aeons to consolidate their effect. Built upon the limitations of matter, living organisms exhibit similar characteristics of imperfection. Gradually through the trial and error randomness of biological phenomena such as mutations organisms with survival capabilities proliferate. This slow evolutionary development produces biological disharmony, destructive bacteria and organisms, as well as harmonious adjustments and interrelationships. Centuries and centuries of time are required for the indigenous integrative and synergistic influences to become dominant
Even after intelligent beings of a human order evolved their imperfection coupled with a degree of free will inevitably results in decisions and actions which precipitate evil. This evil is socially compounded resulting in brutalities like Dachau and Auschwitz and wars with the mass destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over and above the imperfections of planetary phenomena and the evil perpetuated by human error and sin the divine plan is also thwarted by the misadaptations and rebellion of supermortal beings who are native to the finite universe.
The traditions of the Lucifer rebellion and the Adamic default suggest catastrophies of major proportions in which the divine plan was abrogated.
When we contemplate the pervasive openness and uncertainty of universe phenomena along with the colossal problems actuated by evil (imperfection) and sin (knowing rejection of truth, beauty, goodness: God), we begin to catch a glimpse of the enormous forbearance and love of the Universal Father and the infinite resources he has for salvaging and saving his wayward children. And this he does by methods which are in harmony with his perfect plan of autonomy and self-determination for the finite creation. Through immanent techniques such as incarnation into the human condition, periodic epochal revelation and indwelling the mortal mind, his loving ministry is slowly but surely winning the struggle with evil and sin without violating man's complete spiritual independence. God's creativity in the evolutionary cosmos begins at the lowest levels but is destined to achieve the highest ends.
We have seen that the divine plan for the finite universe is to create beings of a unique spiritual quality through evolutionary experience. This requires an environment of imperfection in which the principles of reality are immanently present in the material-mindal world of experience.
Here man can discover the spiritual verities in daily living, taste the bitterness and suffering of evil and sin, and repeatedly verify the fulfilling and synergistic character of truth, beauty, and goodness. In this educational atmosphere we are free to make our own value decisions and evolve immortal souls.
The unsurpassed educational character of planetary experience is the reason that even in the face of intense, widespread, and irrational suffering accompanied by seemingly hopeless international confusion the Universal Father does not arbitrarily "step in" to alter his evolutionary methodology for overcoming evil and sin. Error and spiritual rebellion are more clearly seen for what they are they are allowed to run their evolutionary course. More good will accrue in individuals and society by this experiential process than would occur through forced, arbitrary, or revolutionary solutions.
The final answer to the problem of evil for the individual resides in the Spirit of God which indwells the human mind. Although we live in a world where Immanent Intelligence is detected by inference, where knowledge of God is mediated through all reality, we know him personally only through inner experience. By faith and spiritual fellowship we establish a God-consciousness and a living partnership with the Universal Father. As we then face the problems and perplexities of life we are aided by divine wisdom. When suffering and tragedy enter our experience and we have exhausted our own ability to cope, an augmented inner peace, a new understanding, a fresh combination of resources undergird our life. Those who establish this inner relationship are invulnerable to life's most crushing blows. They are learning "to feast upon uncertainty, to fatten upon disappointment, to enthuse over apparent defeat, to invigorate in the presence of difficulties, to exhibit indomitable courage in the face of immensity, and to exercise unconquerable faith when confronted with the challenge of the inexplicable. They are discovering that "in liaison with God, nothing--absolutely nothing--is impossible." (The Urantia Book, p. 291)
One of the most important things in human living, is to find out what Jesus believed, to discover his ideals, and to strive for the achievement of his exalted life purpose. Of all human knowledge, that which is of the greatest value is to know the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it. (2092)
Jesus founded the religion of personal experience in doing the will of God and serving the human brotherhood. (2092)
The living religion of Jesus is the most powerful force for shaping human destiny on our world. In less than two-thousand years, which is only a moment in anthropological time, it has influenced life on our planet more than all of the kings who have ever reigned; the armies who have ever marched; the navies who have ever sailed; and, yes, more than the advent of the atom bomb and atomic power! What was the key to this marvelous life which he lived among us?
Jesus’ entire life centered around a consciousness of God, and all of the beliefs by which he lived, stem out of this relationship with the heavenly Father. His dynamic, living faith was the source of all of his teachings. Let us look at this transforming faith of Jesus. First of all, Jesus believed and taught that God is in sure and ultimate control of the universe and that God loves man as a father loves his children. Jesus assures us that God is our heavenly Father; and, therefore, we have nothing to fear. He told the fearful young man who fled to the hills with a crippling sense of inferiority, that he could free himself from this false self-image by realizing that he was a son of God. Living in this reborn image of the spirit, Jesus told him, "Trouble will invigorate you; disappointment will spur you on; difficulties will challenge you; and obstacles will stimulate you. Arise, young man! Say farewell to the life of cringing fear and fleeing cowardice. Hasten back to duty and live your life in the flesh as a son of God; a mortal dedicated to the ennobling service of man on earth; and destined to the superb and eternal service of God in eternity." (1438)
We have the resources of the universe on our side. Jesus was always aware of the power of spiritual leverage in solving the material problems of life. He said to the young man working with him in the Caesarean shipyard, who was grumbling about his cruel and unjust foreman, "Since you know the ways of kindness and value justice, perhaps the Gods have brought this erring man near, that you may lead him into this better way. Maybe you are the salt which is to make this brother more agreeable to all other men…Why not assert your mastery of evil by virtue of the power of goodness; and thus become the master of all relations between the two of you? I predict that the good in you could overcome the evil in him, if you gave it a fair and living chance." (1430)
Jesus never tired of reminding his fellowmen that they were sons and daughters of God, and that the spiritual resources at their disposal were more than adequate to cope with their human and material problems. Indeed, he had a very high regard for human nature, and understood its great potentials. He saw in Mary Magdalene, not the harlot of the streets, but the strong spiritual leader which she became. He perceived in Peter, not the impetuous man who spoke before he thought, or the coward who denied his Lord, but the spiritual rock and great evangelist, which he became. The confidence which Jesus has inspired in countless men and women over the centuries, has inspired them to actualize their potentialities, as has no person in the history of man.
Unfortunately, vast numbers of struggling people do not hear this life-giving message of Jesus. Dr. James Dobson, in a survey of young married women, found that their most difficult problem was low self-respect. The religion of Jesus is tailored to the needs of such people. Jesus declared that even the most lowly human being, is a son or daughter of God; and that when they recognize and accept this fact, they will develop a superb self-respect. Most of the debilitating problems in our lives are the result of a negative self-image, and its consequent negative view on life.
Dr. Morrison of :Pasadena, CA, contrasts the outlook of two people he knew. The first was a suicide note from a girl saying, "I am twenty-one. I have seen everything worth seeing. I know everything worth knowing. I don’t like life – it’s cheap, dirty, and disappointing. I’ve had all I want."
The other was written by William Mulock, Canadian statesman and educator, on his ninty-fifth birthday. "I am still at work, with my hand to the plow, and my face to the future. The shadows of the evening lengthen about me, but morning is in my heart. The testimony I bear is this: The Castle of Enchantment is not yet behind me. It is before me still, and daily I catch glimpses of its battlements and towers. The best of life is always further on. Its real lure is hidden from our eyes somewhere behind the hills of time."
What is the real difference behind these contrasting views of life? It is their self-images. The one identifies with a sense of meaninglessness and the consequent worthlessness of life. The other is identified with the transcendent Reality behind the hills of time, and the consequent richness of a life of service. Both have the finite frailties of the human mind and body, which, like sand and water when mixed together, can be exceedingly weak; but to the one life, there was added the cement of spiritual reality, which transmuted these frail human elements into the concrete and permanent achievements of the soul.
The unconquerable faith which Jesus had in the loving rule of God in the heart of man, along with his confidence in the high potentialities of men and women, caused him to proclaim the existence of the most basic relationship of the universe: The Kingdom of God. The fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man are the basic foundations of this spiritual kingdom. This loving relationship is established within the heart and mind of each person, and brings the greatest freedom and joy which finite man can experience. The two indispensable requisites for entering this spiritual kingdom, are the sincerity of faith, and the hunger for truth. Jesus taught that truth perception is the heart of spiritual experience. "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." (1796) Over six-hundred rules dominated the religious life of the Jewish people of Jesus’ day, and controlled every aspect of their lives. The kingdom of God establishes true spiritual freedom. Followers of the religion of Jesus, live by the timeless spiritual principles of the universe, rather than custom-conditioned religious rules. Or, as St. Augustine phrased it, "Love God and do as you like."
As we place the spiritual priorities of the kingdom first in our lives, other things follow creatively. The inner leading of the spirit enables us to discover and actualize abilities and activities which make us effective sons and daughters of God.
The well known English writer, A. J. Cronin, began his professional career as a physician, but always, in the background of his mind, was the urge to write a novel. At the age of thirty-three, he developed a gastric ulcer, and was told he must take six months complete rest in the country on a milk diet. One day, weeks later, bored by enforced idleness, he stood on the desolate shore of a Highland loch, and raised his voice in a decision of frustration, "By heavens! This is my opportunity. Gastric ulcer, or no gastric ulcer, I will write a novel." For months, he struggled and agonized over words, phrases, and sentences. When he was half way through the novel, he paused to read what he had written. He was appalled. Never, had he read such nonsense. No one would read it. Furious with the futility of all of it, he bundled up the manuscript, went out, and threw it in the ash can.
With sullen satisfaction, he went for a walk in the drizzling rain. Half way down the loch shore, he came upon the old Scottish farmer who was his host, laboriously digging a patch of heath. When he told the old farmer what he had just done, his weathered face slowly changed; his keen eyes scanned Cronin with disappointment and a queer contempt. The silent man eventually spoke: "My father ditched this bog all his days, and never made a pasture. I’ve dug it all my days, and I’ve never made a pasture. But pasture, or no pasture, I canna help but dig. For, my father knew, and I know, that if you only dig enough, a pasture can be made here."
Cronin understood. He returned to the ash can, retrieved his manuscript, and before the six months were over, he finished it. The novel, Hatter’s Castle was selected by the English Book Society, dramatized, serialized, translated into nineteen languages, and has sold millions of copies.
Our lives are made meaningful, and the most useful, when we follow the inner leading of the will of God. When we are following these spiritual priorities, we do not change them simply because we become discouraged, meet opposition, or do not find the results we would like. Sometimes, generations of digging are necessary to turn some evil bogs into pleasant pastures.
Next to placing complete trust in the loving sovereignty of God over all of life, the second major emphasis in the religion of Jesus, is that faith and confidence in the spiritual realities of the kingdom, is the foundation of sonship with God. Faith is the only requirement for sonship and salvation. If your life is to be strong and productive, you need to distinguish between belief and faith. Belief is an intellectual assent, which may, or may not be lived. A psychological state of mind attains faith levels only when it dominates our life style, with our wholehearted consent.
Belief is limiting and circumscribed; faith is expanding, releasing, and growing. Belief tends toward dogmatism; faith tends toward openness and freedom. Belief can be second-hand, and a group possession; faith must be personal. Spiritual faith is unconquerable. It causes us to grow and progress in spite of our desire for ease, and the urge of the lower level animal tendencies. It generates courage and confidence despite adversities, reverses, and defeat. Faith, working through individuals, undergirds the continued survival of justice and altruism, in spite of human selfishness, social antagonisms, industrial greeds, and political maladjustments.
We are living in a culture experiencing a crisis in faith. There is a "credibility gap", a decline of public trust in all our social institutions. Theologian Richard Rubenstein in After Auschwitz, says: "We stand in a cold, silent, unfeeling cosmos, unaided by any purposive power beyond our own resources." Our secular society is nearing the brink of what Baptist theologian Carl Henry calls: "…the absolute autonomy of man, who does not need God, either to know the truth, or to do good…whether he wishes to walk on the moon, cure cancer, or bring peace on earth." Mass education has failed to produce an enlightened society, or curb greed and violence.
In such a world of confusion and disharmony, to exercise living faith in the religion of Jesus, requires spiritual vision and moral courage. One of the most noble exponents of this faith was Toyohiko Kagawa of Japan. This modern St. Francis of Assisi was the son of a philandering businessman, and a concubine. He was raised by an embittered stepmother and stepgrandmother, who took turns beating the boy. Only when when he was sent away to school, did he learn that there was love and tenderness in the world. Two Christian missionaries took the lonely boy into their hearts and homes, and taught him that all people are created by a God of love; and that any person devoting himself or herself to serving their fellowman, can work tremendous changes for good. The religion of Jesus inspired in Kagawa a lifelong passion to lift the down trodden, love the loveless, and serve the oppressed.
Later, when he started studying for the Christian ministry, he plunged into his studies so furiously, he developed tuberculosis. Friends sent him to the seashore for a year, where he wrote a novel on assorted scraps of paper. Kagawa, driven by an obsession to live, in spite of racking hemorrhages, returned to his studies in Tokyo. He completed his studies, and following graduation, moved his few possessions into a six by six hut in the slums of Shinkawa, where he was to live and work for fifteen years. Here, in Shinkawa, he developed the ideas and service programs which made him world famous, and where he wrote most of his more than one hundred books.
Beggars of a baser sort took advantage of his Christian faith. One asked Kagawa for his shirt, and when he got it, demanded also, his coat and pants. When he complied, a reformed prostitute brought Kagawa a woman’s kimono, which he wore about the streets. Ruffians demanded money, and wen he had no more to give, they assaulted him, and knocked out his front teeth. He took a job as a chimney sweep at $5.00 a month, to provide more rice for the destitute. When visitors called him a fool, he proudly amended it to "Christ’s fool."
In 1914, he began to promote social reform. When thousands of Kobe dock workers asked for his leadership, he responded by organizing them into Japan’s first labor union, with the condition that they use non-violent methods. The police seized him, beat him, and dragged him off to jail. The day he was released, 35,000 men armed with bricks and crowbars, set out on a march to destroy the shipyards. There were no guards to stop them, but standing on a narrow bridge over which they had to pass, was a solitary figure. The mob came to a halt. Kagawa did not speak; he stood praying silently. The men, ashamed, turned, and went home. Largely because of his influence, in 1925, the law forbidding unions was repealed. It was also because of the co-operatives which Kagawa organized, that communism was uable to get a major foothold in Japan.
Following Pearl Harbor, Kagawa’s pacificism frequently landed him in jail; but, following the war, it was this pint-sized man who had spent his life stalwartly living the religion of Jesus, that Emperor Hirohito asked to come and tell him how he might become a man of the people. The audience lasted three times as long as the time for which it was scheduled. Finally, Kagawa opened a battered Bible and read: "Whosoever will be great among you…shall be the servant of all." He added: "A ruler’s sovereignty, Your Majesty, is in the hearts of his people. Only by service to others can a man, or a nation, be godlike."
It is this quality of faith that changes lives and nations. It is not where society is now, or where you are now, which is important. The all important thing, is the way in which you are facing. When Jesus and Ganid brought the two women of the night in Corinth to Justus’ wife, he was not concerned about their mistakes in the past, but in helping them get a start on a new and better way of life for the future. It is our mind-set which controls our destiny. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." Even now, we can use the mind of Jesus to augment our weak and often unstable minds. His Spirit of Truth is ever present in our own minds to strengthen, guide, and lead us into thoughts of wisdom and power. This mind and soul-force of the kingdom may start in our lives, from mustard seed beginnings, but it grows from within to take charge of our lives, and make us powerful and efficient instruments for truth, beauty, and goodness.
The third major emphasis of the religion of Jesus, is that love and service are the highest motives for living. These are the "Being" values which fulfill the deepest needs of human nature, and bring happiness into our lives. When the lawyer of the Pharisees asked Jesus to state the first and greatest commandment of life, Jesus replied: "There is but one commandment…’you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength’…and the second commandment is like the first…’You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these; on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (1901)
The empirical and scientific wisdom of man has arrived at the same conclusions. The psychiatrist, Dr. Fisher, in his book Some Buttons Missing, says that if all of the wisdom which psychiatrists and psychologists have garnered over the years were boiled down to the meat, leaving out the parsley, and if this meat were written by the world’s best poets – you would have a lesser facsimile of the world’s greatest message of love, "The Sermon on the Mount." The anthropologist, Ashley Montagu, in On Being Human says: "The [human] organism is born with an innate need for love. Whatever is opposed to love, to goodness, and to co-operation, is disharmonic, unviable, unstable, and malfunctional – evil."
When Mozart was a small boy, he was visited by an eminent man of wisdom, Gottfried von Jacquin. Mozart was already well known as a child prodigy. Gottfried von Jacquin wrote these memorable words in Mozart’s album: "True genius without heart, cannot exist – for neither high intelligence, nor imagination, nor both together, make genius. Love! Love! Love! …is the soul of genius."
Jesus’ religion of love even appeals to most of those who reject institutional Christianity. Bertrand Russell, Nobel Prize winner, distinguished philosopher, and author of Why I Am Not a Christian, lectured at Columbia University in November of 1950. His brilliant mind traced the impact of science on contemporary society. In the first lecture, Philosopher Russell, rather thoroughly, dismissed the formulations of Christian theology. Yet, his last lecture ends with a rather strange conclusion. He is enumerating the things and conditions which are necessary if our scientific age is to be relatively happy and stable. He says: "The root of the matter is a very simple and old-fashioned thing; a thing so simple that I am almost ashamed to mention it, for fear of the derisive smile with which wise cynics will greet my words. The thing I mean – please forgive me for mentioning it – is love; Christian love; compassion. If you feel this, you have a motive for existence; a guide in action; and a reason for courage."
Love is the most powerful attitude of man. Harry Emerson Fosdick relates a story which occurred during the Armenian atrocities. A young woman and her brother were pursued down a street by a Turkish soldier. Finally, they were cornered and the brother was brutally slaughtered. The young woman, while her brother was being slain, dodged down an alley, leaped a fence, and escaped. Later, being a nurse, she was forced by the Turks to labor in a hospital. One day, to the ward she attended, came the Turkish soldier who had slain her brother. He was desperately ill, and the slightest inattention would have ensured his death. No one would have ever known. But, she did all within her power to restore him to health. He recognized her, and one day asked her why she had not let him die. She replied: "I am a follower of him who said: ‘Love your enemies and do good for them.’" For a long time, the soldier was silent. Then he said: "I never knew that there was such a religion. If that is your religion, tell me about it, for I want it."
Service is the hallmark of all who live the religion of Jesus. We are told by a Mighty Messenger that: "Service – more service, increased service, difficult service, adventurous service, and at last, divine and perfect service – is the goal of time, and the destination of space." (316) "Every man feels, instinctively,…", James Russell Lowell points out, "…that all of the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single, lovely action." Any one who has experienced a dynamic personal relationship with God, and had dedicated himself to the demands of this relationship, must do something about it. "True religion must act." (1121)
Such service is possible even for those who are destitute and seemingly have nothing to give. George Washington Carver was such a person. He was born in Missouri of slave parents whom he never knew, because they were carried off by slave raiders when he was a baby. The white planter, Moses Carver, who raised him, was so poor, the Carvers were unable to send him to school. So, George went on his own; slept in barns and haylofts, worked for his food, at whatever jobs turned-up; took in all of the learning which the one-room school house had to offer.
He was admitted by mail, to the University of Iowa, but later rejected when they learned that he was a negro. George washed, scrubbed, and house-cleaned his way through three years at Simpson College and four years of agricultural studies at Iowa State College. There, his genius with soils and plants, won him, on graduation, a place on the faculty. But down in central Alabama, Booker T. Washington, the president and founder of Tuskegee Institute, was dreaming of economic emancipation for the negro farmer. He saw young Carver as the key to realizing this dream. When Carver arrived in Tuskegee in 1896, he had nothing to work with. He built a laboratory from material salvaged from trash piles; and transformed his sixteen-acre experimental sand farm into one of the most productive pieces of land in the South.
George Washington Carver became the first and greatest chemurgist in America. His research was the foundation of multi-million dollar agriculture enterprises. Thomas Edison invited him to join his staff at $50,000 a year. But, Carver had a formula for life which kept him at Tuskegee: "Start where you are, with what you have; make something of it; never be satisfied." Spiritual resources were at the heart of George Washington Carver’s service. He had two favorite scripture verses. His "light" passage was Proverbs 3:6: "In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." His "power" passage was Phil. 4:13: "I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me."
Service is not only related to the big and important things in life. It includes the small and semingly insignificant things. "Most of the really important things which Jesus said and did seemed to happen casually, ‘…as He passed by…’" (1875) This can be true of our lives, also. In the midst of the depression, when Ted and Dorothy Hustead were barely able to suvive in their Wall, South Dakota drug store, they noticed that travelers in the hot and dusty climate, were always thirsty when they entered the store. They posted signs along approaching highways, "Free Ice Water, Wall Drug Store, Wall, South Dakota." Soon, thirsty people were showing up, and signs were placed farther and farther East, all the way to the coast. Eventually, the Wall Drug Store was hiring twenty-eight employees to serve an average of 5,000 glasses of water a day.
Sometimes, the kind and thoughtful little things we do are long remembered, and have far-reaching consequences. Fred C. Kelly tells how…late one night, many years ago, the manager of a small hotel in Philadelphia, happened to be behind the desk when a middle-aged man and his wife from New York came in. The wife was ill, and they had been unable to find lodgings, because a large convention of some kind was in the city, and all of the hotels were crowded. They were polite, and didn’t make any demands, but asked the advice of the manager about how they might obtain a place to sleep. "Every guest room is filled…", the manager said, "…but," he added, "I’ll give you my own room."
The manager hadn’t even learned their names, and didn’t expect any special reward for his courtesy. He just did it as an act of decency. But, it made a great impression on the man and his wife. They noticed that the hotel was well managed, and that much attention seemed to be paid to small details, for the comfort of the guests. The next morning, the husband called upon the manager and said: "You’re the kind of hotel manager that should be at the head of a really great hotel. I’d like to build one for you. If that interests you, please get in touch with me some time." The guest was William Waldorf Astor. And the hotel man was the late George C. Boldt. As manager of the old Waldorf-Astoria, that Astor provided for him, Boldt became known as the greatest hotel man of his time.
The great challenge of every life is to find and dedicate oneself to a meaninful life-plan. God has a purpose for your life, and one of your greatest opportunities is to find and follow that plan. Millard Fuller, director of Habitat for Humanity, an ecumenical service project with headquarters at Koinonia Farm, near Plains, Georgia, thought he had found the key to American success in his twenties. As a law student, his part time entrepreneurial projects made him more money than the president of the university was making. After graduation, he put his money making abilities into high gear. Soon, he and his business partner owned a publishing business, and 2,000 acres of farm land. Millard was a millionaire before he was thirty. He and his wife, Linda, had plans on the drawing board for a $150,000 home on a twenty-
