A path to the beautiful wholeness of righteousness:
Growth for sowers
July 12, 2019, For the conference of the Estonian Urantia Association:
Sowing seeds– Qualitative Internal and Quantitative External Growth
How does qualitative inner growth lead to quantitative external growth? Once we acquire the beautiful wholeness of righteousness, that will attract others. So how do we acquire the beautiful wholeness? We learn to live in a way that coordinates the truths of religion with the truths of science. Jesus calls it truth coordination.
If you by truth coordination learn to exemplify in your lives this beautiful wholeness of righteousness, your fellow men will then seek after you to gain what you have so acquired.
Again: how can sowers of gospel seed acquire this beautiful wholeness? There is a path, and it begins with this foundation.
- The happiness that comes from faith in Jesus’ promise: They who hunger and thirst for righteousness shall be filled.
- The gift. Righteousness is a gift from God. Be righteous by faith.
- The learning. Learn to live the truth-coordinated life.
- The beautiful wholeness of righteousness
First, the foundation. Imagine that you are back in Galilee with Jesus. As a spiritual seeker, you ask him in humility how to enter the kingdom, the spiritual family of God. And Jesus welcomes you in.
As the days and weeks pass, sometimes you live beautifully in God, and sometimes you fall back into the old self. You really want to do what is right, with spiritual motivation–this is what righteousness means to you. Your soul begins to hunger and thirst for it. You go back to Jesus and ask him, “What should I do to become righteous?” And he replies, “Happy are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.”
When you hear this, you believe and rejoice. You do not ask when you will be filled. It doesn’t matter if it is beyond this life. The assurance of Jesus is your overflowing fulfillment right now. You are very happy. You sense that this foundation will sustain you all the way to Paradise.
Next, the gift. Your quest for righteousness continues. Your concept has been expanding. You have discovered that righteousness is cosmic—eternally anchored in the Universal Father. “Righteousness implies that God is the source of the moral law of the universe.” (2:6.5/41.3) You recognize the fact of the sovereignty of God.
After a year, you have another chance to be with Jesus. He is speaking with friends, including women. You hear him quote from the prophet Isaiah: “My soul shall rejoice in the love of my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation and has covered me with the robe of his righteousness.” (150:5.2/1682.4) When you hear this, you realize that righteousness is a gift that we receive from God.
Then Jesus starts talking about what his friends must be, not what they must do. He says that in the family of God you must be righteous in order to do the work. “In the kingdom, being righteous, by faith, must precede doing righteousness in the daily life of the mortals of earth.” So righteousness is first and foremost a way of being. And the gift of salvation is to be had only by believing, by simple and sincere faith. Next, Jesus reveals a new aspect of faith. Faith in the effectiveness of the supreme human desire to do the will of God—to be like God.” (140:10.9/1585.7) Then Jesus says, with great earnestness, “Discern the truth clearly; live the righteous life fearlessly . . . . If you would guide others into the kingdom, you must yourselves walk in the clear light of living truth.” (140:3.18/1571.5)
Hearing this, you are inspired and a little scared. But you respond to what Jesus says by making a personal and wholehearted moral decision to open yourself to the gift and to be righteous by faith.
Finally, Jesus gives his friends a couple hours to go apart by themselves to find this righteousness in the Father. At first you try silent, worshipful receptivity. You wait for a while, but nothing seems to be happening. And then you try boldly exercising your faith to lay hold of this gift, but for a beginner, that feels awkward. Nevertheless, you persist, and these efforts, which seem mediocre to you, are enough for God to work with. For a few minutes you taste the experience of being righteous. You know that you may have to struggle a bit to re-enter that way of being, but you have broken through to your first clear taste.
Here in Tallinn this morning, we have minutes, not hours. But we can’t learn to swim unless we get into the water. So right now, let’s join as friends of Jesus and enter into a minute of silence to come into the presence of God and open ourselves for our Father to give us whatever of righteousness we are ready to receive.
Learning. Now imagine that you are back again in 1st century Galilee. Months pass. And then you hear Jesus talking about righteousness again—not as a promise for the future, nor simply as a gift of God, but as something we learn.
He says,
- Some people have a science without religion, and others have a religion without science. “And when men become thus misled into accepting a narrow and confused disintegration of truth, their only hope of salvation is to become truth-co-ordinated—converted.
- “Let me emphatically state this eternal truth: If you by truth coordination learn to exemplify in your lives this beautiful wholeness of righteousness, your fellow men will then seek after you to gain what you have so acquired. The measure wherewith truth seekers are drawn to you represents the measure of your truth endowment, your righteousness. The extent to which you have to go with your message to the people is, in a way, the measure of your failure to live the whole or righteous life, the truth-co-ordinated life. (155:1/1726)
You get the message about inner qualitative growth and external quantitative growth. You are inspired by the concept of the beautiful wholeness, and you make a personal and wholehearted moral decision to learn truth-coordination.
And then you come back from 1st century Galilee to 21st century Tallinn, and you ask, “Jeff, how do you coordinate religion and science in your life?” And this is what Jeff says.
Righteousness is not only religious and moral. God is also active in the realm of material facts and the laws of cause and effect. The truths of science are implicit in righteous living. Truth-coordination begins with science as related to the facts of our present situation here and now.
First, an example of facts about oneself. I have tasted the beautiful wholeness of righteousness, and here I am now, talking about it. But imagine that now I faintly recognize the fact that something unbeautiful is going on inside. I recognize it: performance anxiety. I pause to face this fact honestly. Immediately I grasp the scientific meaning of this fact. It is causing distortion in my manner of presentation. And from my experiential study of psychology, I know what caused it.
Once I have a scientific perspective on the facts of my situation, I can intuitively and reflectively discern what truths of religion are relevant. As a sower I think first of the many-sided gospel of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, with its truths of love and mercy, worship and service, joy and liberty, faith and trust. And there are other divine values.
Truth-coordination embraces the unbeautiful fact and sobering scientific perspective together with the beautiful truth of the love and mercy of our Father. Instead of performance anxiety, I relax, trust my audience and aim simply to serve. Once I have made the necessary adjustment, my joy returns, and I can speak truthfully, righteously, in wholeness.
Here’s a second example of truth-coordination, where we see Jesus learning facts about others and adjusting his teaching accordingly. He revealed the height of artistic and scientific sowing.
Jesus became “expert in the divine art of revealing his Paradise Father to all ages and stages of mortal creatures.” (127:6.15/1405.7) This observation suggests that the science most relevant to the divine art of revealing the Father is developmental psychology.
Jesus learned about the sequence of stages from infancy to later adult life by growing up through all the stages, by getting to know all kinds of people well, and by helping others grow. In these ways, he learned lessons with a generality that we could call scientific: truths of psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, and education.
For sowers, the number one truth of science is: Teach according to people’s capacity of receptivity. We meet people where they are; we do not overteach.
Jesus’ life and teachings show how he learned and taught sowing. Jesus sowed gospel seed by getting to know people, discovering the facts of what meanings and values they cherished, their spiritual difficulties, and how hungry and receptive they were. We can do this, too. On the basis of such conversations, when we speak in public or use social media, we generalize intelligently, and we address the spiritual difficulties of a particular audience or of our generation as a whole.
Just as growth is usually gradual, teaching truth is usually gradual, too. Jesus taught cosmic patience to Simon Zelotes.
“Go teaching and preaching the kingdom, and when you have a man safely and securely within the kingdom, then is the time, when such a one shall come to you with inquiries, to impart instruction having to do with the progressive advancement of the soul within the divine kingdom.” (141:6.2/1592.4)
Tending young plants with care.
We acquire the beautiful wholeness of righteousness when faith in the promise, the gift, and the learning are unified.
Let’s review the sower’s path. The foundation is the happiness that comes from faith in Jesus’ promise that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness shall be filled. Next, we receive from God the gift of being righteous by faith. Then we learn to coordinate in our lives the truths of science with the truths of religion. When faith in the promise, the gift, and the learning are unified, you exemplify the beautiful wholeness of righteousness.
Please enjoy this path of growth. Live your righteousness in whatever way is available to you today. And tomorrow there will be more.
In the workshop, in silent response to this presentation, you will individually make (or begin to formulate) a personal and wholehearted moral decision. Then share, discuss, and rejoice.
