6. Divine Goodness and Religion’s Moral Mandates
(Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, Chapter 6)
The great mistake of the Hebrew religion was its failure to associate the goodness of God with the factual truths of science and the appealing beauty of art. As civilization progressed, and since religion continued to pursue the same unwise course of overemphasizing the goodness of Godto the relative exclusion of truth and neglect of beauty, there developed an increasing tendency for certain types of men to turn away from the abstract and dissociated concept of isolated goodness. The overstressed and isolated morality of modern religion, which fails to hold the devotion and loyalty of many twentieth-century men, would rehabilitate itself if, in addition to its moral mandates,it would give equal consideration to the truths of science, philosophy, and spiritual experience, and to the beauties of the physical creation, the charm of intellectual art, and the grandeur of genuine character achievement.
2:7.10 (43.3) The religious challenge of this age is to those farseeing and forward-looking men and women of spiritual insight who will dare to construct a new and appealing philosophy of living out of the enlarged and exquisitely integrated modern concepts of cosmic truth, universe beauty, and divine goodness. Such a new and righteous vision of morality will attract all that is good in the mind of man and challenge that which is best in the human soul. Truth, beauty, and goodness are divine realities, and as man ascends the scale of spiritual living, these supreme qualities of the Eternal become increasingly co-ordinated and unified in God, who is love.
2:7.11 (43.4) All truth — material, philosophic, or spiritual — is both beautiful and good. All real beauty — material art or spiritual symmetry — is both true and good.All genuine goodness — whether personal morality, social equity, or divine ministry — is equally true and beautiful. Health, sanity, and happiness are integrations of truth, beauty, and goodness as they are blended in human experience. Such levels of efficient living come about through the unification of energy systems, idea systems, and spirit systems.
2:7.12 (43.5) Truth is coherent, beauty attractive, goodness stabilizing. And when these values of that which is real are co-ordinated in personality experience, the result is a high order of love conditioned by wisdom and qualified by loyalty. The real purpose of all universe education is to effect the better co-ordination of the isolated child of the worlds with the larger realities of his expanding experience. Reality is finite on the human level, infinite and eternal on the higher and divine levels. (2:7.9-12/43.2-5)
A focus on religion’s moral mandates leads us into the following questions:
· What can I do to gain an augmented concept of divine goodness?
· What is the role of the moral law in a religion of love?
· Love is the desire to do good to others. What guidance does religion give for doing?
· How can I sharpen my intuition of morality, duty?
· What do I need to do to more perfectly fulfill religion’s moral mandates?
· What other questions do I have on these topics?
Divine Goodness and the Moral Law
The Universal Father—infinite, eternally perfect, righteous and just, merciful, and loving—is good. Please take a couple of minutes to read Paper 2, section 6, The Goodness of God. Watch the unfolding of the concept of morality: the two kinds of morality—kingly morality contrasted with the “intimate family morality of the parent-child relationship”; morality in isolation from the assurance of relationship with a loving Father God; that “righteousness may be the divine thought, but love is a father’s attitude”; God as the source of the moral law of the universe. Ponder the role of law in love.
Note that duty is a pillar of life.“The satisfying joy of high duty is the eclipsing emotion of spiritual beings.” Duty is one of the three intuitions of the cosmic mind.
16:6.7 (192.3) 2. Duty — the reality domain of morals in the philosophic realm, the arena of reason, the recognition of relative right and wrong. This is the judicial form of the cosmic discrimination.
But we must be self-critical of what we consider to be our intuitions in moral and ethical matters. Sometimes what seems obvious to us is one-sided, an affair of our social location and other evolutionary factors. What can I do to sharpen my capacity for intuition—insight? How can I integrate our intuition of duty with my intuitions of causation and worship?Without integration, we are stuck in isolated duty consciousness, moralism.
When Jesus gives the new commandment that we love one another as he has loved us, the immediate context has to do with willingness to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (not to mention enemies). The commentary refers to isolated duty consciousness.
180:1.6 (1945.3) Keep in mind: It is loyalty, not sacrifice, that Jesus demands. The consciousness of sacrifice implies the absence of that wholehearted affection which would have made such a loving service a supreme joy. The idea of duty signifies that you are servant-minded and hence are missing the mighty thrill of doing your service as a friend and for a friend. The impulse of friendship transcends all convictions of duty, and the service of a friend for a friend can never be called a sacrifice.
Religion’s moral mandates
What are religion’s moral mandates?
· Be you perfect. “This magnificent and universal injunction to strive for the attainment of the perfection of divinity is the first duty, and should be the highest ambition, of all the struggling creature creation of the God of perfection.”
· Worship God. “Worship is the highest privilege and the first duty of all created intelligences.”
· Seek, find, choose, and do the will of God.
· Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself
· The rule of living: Treat others as you want others to treat you. (147:4/1650)
· “Every relationship is an end in itself”
· Personal ministry; social service
· Seek “the greatest good of the greatest number of men over the greatest length of time.”
· Proclaim the gospel by your lives andteachings
Are there other mandates at this level of generality?
Religion also has some specific things to say about moral and ethical questions (I regard morality as the domain of the individual and one-to-one relationships, and ethics as pertaining to the problems of social systems of three or more persons).
Religion today often gets entangled in social, economic, and political matters; as a result, its spiritual mission is compromised (99:1/1086; 140:8/1579). Although individual religionists may well involve themselves heavily in such matters, but those who wish to represent religion must take care; the point is not that a representative of religion should never say anything about those realms, but must avoid getting entangled. Jesus many times drew attention to the injustice of the unequal distribution of wealth—but he never proposed any way of solving that problem.
The philosophy of living sketched at the end of Paper 2 LTBGmakes
LTBG touches mentions the following planetary ethical problems.
In society, the importance of family life (142:7/1604)
In economics, the service motive as well as the profit motive (71:6/805)
In politics, nationalism vs. intelligent patriotism embracing planetary responsibility
Ecological responsibility
Race relations and the value of a kind of sociological description, used in The Urantia Book, and originally terms a description of “ideal types” by the founder of sociology, Max Weber. See LTBG p. 175, note 47. An understanding of this mode of description helps us to understand the consistency of Part IV spiritual equality and Part III discussions of group inequalities.
community welfare
134:5.2 (1487.9) War on Urantia will never end so long as nations cling to the illusive notions of unlimited national sovereignty. There are only two levels of relative sovereignty on an inhabited world: the spiritual free will of the individual mortal and the collective sovereignty of mankind as a whole. Between the level of the individual human being and the level of the total of mankind, all groupings and associations are relative, transitory, and of value only in so far as they enhance the welfare, well-being, and progress of the individual and the planetary grand total — man and mankind.
Religion and politics: https://sites.google.com/site/ubquestionsandstudies/a-gospel-school/religion-and-politics; for a version of these ideas that was well-received by religious studies professors: https://sites.google.com/a/kent.edu/jwattles/home/publications/reason-and-peace-among-religions; for a presentation to the 2015 Salt Lake City Parliament of World’s Religions:
134:5.4 (1488.2) This rule of the Most Highs in the kingdoms of men is not for the especial benefit of any especially favored group of mortals. There is no such thing as a “chosen people.” The rule of the Most Highs, the overcontrollers of political evolution, is a rule designed to foster the greatest good to the greatest number of all men and for the greatest length of time.
“All genuine goodness — whether personal morality, social equity, or divine ministry — is equally true and beautiful.” Please comment on the meaning of personal morality, social equity, and divine ministry. And, we are told that goodness is “stabilizing.” Please comment.
1. What Is Morality?
To the question of what morality is, there are two answers: the bottom-up answer tells the story of human evolution. The top-down answer tells the story of the will of the Universal Father, divine goodness, duty as a function of cosmic mind, and revealed moral teachings found in epochal revelations and in the answer to prayer. The weaving together of these two stories provides a full answer to the question.
16:6.7 (192.3) 2. Duty — the reality domain of morals in the philosophic realm, the arena of reason, the recognition of relative right and wrong. This is the judicial form of the cosmic discrimination. (16:6.7/192.3)
In this context, duty is associated with causation and worship as realms of reality into which we can sharpen our insight; although these three factors in thinking can become “disproportionate and virtually unrelated in their respective functions,” when these intuitions are unified, “they produce a strong character consisting in the correlation of a factual science, a moral philosophy, and a genuine religious experience” (16:6.10/192.6). Indeed, “the satisfying joy of high duty is the eclipsing emotion of spiritual beings” (25:1.6/274.3).
Question. In the light of the preceding teachings, how shall we interpret the following statement? In his farewell discourse to the eleven loyal apostles, Jesus has given the commandment to love one another as he has loved them, and has spoken of laying down his life for his friends—including them. Then comes a commentary, which includes these lines. “The idea of duty signifies that you are servant-minded and hence are missing the mighty thrill of doing your service as a friend and for a friend. The impulse of friendship transcends all convictions of duty, and the service of a friend for a friend can never be called a sacrifice.” (180:1.6/1945.3)
Morality begins as a purely evolutionary development.
86:6.6 (956.2) But at last the mind of primitive man was occupied with thoughts which transcended all of his inherent biologic urges; at last man was about to evolve an art of living based on something more than response to material stimuli. The beginnings of a primitive philosophic life policy were emerging. A supernatural standard of living was about to appear, for, if the spirit ghost in anger visits ill luck and in pleasure good fortune, then must human conduct be regulated accordingly. The concept of right and wrong had at last evolved; and all of this long before the times of any revelation on earth.
117:4.8 (1284.4) The temporal relation of man to the Supreme is the foundation for cosmic morality, the universal sensitivity to, and acceptance of, duty. This is a morality which transcends the temporal sense of relative right and wrong; it is a morality directly predicated on the self-conscious creature’s appreciation of experiential obligation to experiential Deity. Mortal man and all other finite creatures are created out of the living potential of energy, mind, and spirit existent in the Supreme. It is upon the Supreme that the Adjuster-mortal ascender draws for the creation of the immortal and divine character of a finaliter. It is out of the very reality of the Supreme that the Adjuster, with the consent of the human will, weaves the patterns of the eternal nature of an ascending son of God.
If we try to specify morality further, we can consider the moral implications of the fact that God infinitely loves each personality as a unique individual, which brings into existence the relation of the whole(12:7.9/138.4). “Everything nonspiritual in human experience, excepting personality, is a means to an end. Every true relationship of mortal man with other persons—human or divine—is an end in itself.” (112:2.8/1228.3) When we wonder about our duty to the whole, we learn that “the rule of the Most Highs . . . is . . . designed to foster the greatest good to the greatest number ofall men and for the greatest length of time” (134:5.4/1488.2).
Over the course of human history, we observe morality as an evolutionary development. The loyal Planetary Prince’s staff and Adam and Eve presented codes that are akin to the Ten Commandments (66:7.8-15/751.3-10 and 74:7/835). These codes have served as beacons for civilization.
Jesus offered liberation to the Jews of his day, who were burdened by hundreds of laws regulating life in matters large and small. In place of the laws of the Torah supplemented by the oral law, he taught two commandments: to love God with all one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love the neighbor as oneself (174:4.2/1901.2).
Question. What is your experience of taking these commandments seriously?
In the ordination sermon Jesus made it clear that he expected the apostles as ambassadors of the kingdom to live at a standard well beyond what he expected of the disciples (140:3/1570-71).
Question. What level of moral standard do you expect of yourself? (This might not be an appropriate discussion question, because self-revelation is voluntary, and some could find discussing this in a group to be awkward.)
A search for specific moral guidance in the Urantia Book finds a number of passages on sex, abortion, divorce, and eugenics (all relevant to marriage, family life, and the home; substance abuse (physical poisons); .
Note the distinction between morality and ethics (terms that some philosophers use as synonyms; while some prefer to speak of ethics with its more intellectual connotation, while “moral” seems to academic ring, ring “ethics” since “morality” has connotations that seem to them to be narrow). Morality refers to personal standards for the conduct of one-to-one relationships, while ethics refers to standards for social systems of three or more and also to the philosophical reflection on morality and social standards.
196:3.11 (2094.10) The moral values of the universe become intellectual possessions by the exercise of the three basic judgments, or choices, of the mortal mind:
196:3.12 (2094.11) 1. Self-judgment — moral choice.
196:3.13 (2094.12) 2. Social-judgment — ethical choice.
196:3.14 (2094.13) 3. God-judgment — religious choice.
196:3.20 (2095.4) Every time man makes a reflective moral choice, he immediately experiences a new divine invasion of his soul. Moral choosing constitutes religion as the motive of inner response to outer conditions. But such a real religion is not a purely subjective experience. It signifies the whole of the subjectivity of the individual engaged in a meaningful and intelligent response to total objectivity — the universe and its Maker.
103:9.10 (1142.1) When reason once recognizes right and wrong, it exhibits wisdom; when wisdom chooses between right and wrong, truth and error, it demonstrates spirit leading.
Put spiritually, our duty is to do the Father’s will. This involves (1) the supreme desireto do the Father’s will, (2) whatwe are to do, and (3) howwe do it.
More specifically, we have at least three statements that state what our first duty is: “to strive for the attainment of the perfection of divinity” (1:0.4/22.1); worship (27:7.1/303.5); and a third, Jesus’ answer to the lawyer who asked which commandment is the greatest.
“There is but one commandment, and that one is the greatest of all, and that commandment is: `Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second commandment is like this first; indeed, it springs directly therefrom, and it is: `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. (174:4.2/1901.2)
The gospel can be summarized as a call for worship and service.
Jesus made the care of God for man like the solicitude of a loving father for the welfare of his dependent children and then made this teaching the cornerstone of his religion. And thus did the doctrine of the fatherhood of God make imperative the practice of the brotherhood of man. The worship of God and the service of man became the sum and substance of his religion. (1769.9)
Then the Master discoursed at some length on the earthly family as an illustration of the heavenly family, restating the two fundamental laws of living: the first commandment of love for the father, the head of the family, and the second commandment of mutual love among the children, to love your brother as yourself. And then he explained that such a quality of brotherly affection would invariably manifest itself in unselfish and loving social service. (1603.5)
There are different kinds of service.
178:1.11 (1931.2) Remember that you are commissioned to preach this gospel of the kingdom — the supreme desire to do the Father’s will coupled with the supreme joy of the faith realization of sonship with God — and you must not allow anything to divert your devotion to this one duty. Let all mankind benefit from the overflow of your loving spiritual ministry, enlightening intellectual communion, and uplifting social service; but none of these humanitarian labors, nor all of them, should be permitted to take the place of proclaiming the gospel.
What is the difference between personal ministry and social service? Jesus engaged in both types of activity in Rome (132:4 and 6/1460 and 65). What is your experience of social service? Any personal experiences to share? What motivates you to do it? Why are we sometimes poorly motivated when an occasion for service arises? At other times it can be hard to say no when a service opportunity arises that may not represent the will of God. How do you work out balance in this regard?
4. Economic attitude. Jesus worked, lived, and traded in the world as he found it. He was not an economic reformer, although he did frequently call attention to the injustice of the unequal distribution of wealth. But he did not offer any suggestions by way of remedy. He made it plain to the three that, while his apostles were not to hold property, he was not preaching against wealth and property, merely its unequal and unfair distribution. He recognized the need for social justice and industrial fairness, but he offered no rules for their attainment. (140:8.15/1581.2)
For the biographical profiles in chapter 6, I chose to highlight Albert Schweitzer partly because of his thorough process of decision-making. Think of Jesus’ process in making the great decisions in the wilderness after baptism, decisions which structured the conduct of the last period of his life. Think of the conditions of effective prayer (91:9/1002). Schweitzer implies that in his decision-making process, he was mindful of to Jesus’ parable of counting the cost (Luke 14:28-32). Here’s the version in The Urantia Book; the words come shortly before Jesus goes into Jerusalem for the last time.
) “You who would follow after me from this time on, must be willing to pay the price of wholehearted dedication to the doing of my Father’s will. If you would be my disciples, you must be willing to forsake father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters. If any one of you would now be my disciple, you must be willing to give up even your life just as the Son of Man is about to offer up his life for the completion of the mission of doing the Father’s will on earth and in the flesh.
“If you are not willing to pay the full price, you can hardly be my disciple. Before you go further, you should each sit down and count the cost of being my disciple. Which one of you would undertake to build a watchtower on your lands without first sitting down to count up the cost to see whether you had money enough to complete it? If you fail thus to reckon the cost, after you have laid the foundation, you may discover that you are unable to finish that which you have begun, and therefore will all your neighbors mock you, saying, ‘Behold, this man began to build but was unable to finish his work.’ Again, what king, when he prepares to make war upon another king, does not first sit down and take counsel as to whether he will be able, with ten thousand men, to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? If the king cannot afford to meet his enemy because he is unprepared, he sends an embassy to this other king, even when he is yet a great way off, asking for terms of peace.
“Now, then, must each of you sit down and count the cost of being my disciple. From now on you will not be able to follow after us, listening to the teaching and beholding the works; you will be required to face bitter persecutions and to bear witness for this gospel in the face of crushing disappointment. If you are unwilling to renounce all that you are and to dedicate all that you have, then are you unworthy to be my disciple. If you have already conquered yourself within your own heart, you need have no fear of that outward victory which you must presently gain when the Son of Man is rejected by the chief priests and the Sadducees and is given into the hands of mocking unbelievers.
“Now should you examine yourself to find out your motive for being my disciple. If you seek honor and glory, if you are worldly minded, you are like the salt when it has lost its savor. And when that which is valued for its saltiness has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be seasoned? Such a condiment is useless; it is fit only to be cast out among the refuse. Now have I warned you to turn back to your homes in peace if you are not willing to drink with me the cup which is being prepared. Again and again have I told you that my kingdom is not of this world, but you will not believe me. He who has ears to hear let him hear what I say.” (171:2/1869-70; Luke 14:25-33)
Schweitzer also exemplifies what it means to “exhaust the human capacity for human adjustment” (91:9/1002) in opening himself to divine revelation.
Schweitzer realized the crisis in Western civilization that was evident by the late nineteenth century.
Christianity suffers under a great handicap because it has become identified in the minds of all the world as a part of the social system, the industrial life, and the moral standards of Western civilization; and thus has Christianity unwittingly seemed to sponsor a society which staggers under the guilt of tolerating science without idealism, politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without restraint, knowledge without character, power without conscience, and industry without morality. (195:10.20/2086.6; this list is identical to the list of seven deadly sins identified by Mohandas Gandhi, except that Gandhi added worship without sacrifice).
As you read the profile of Jane Addams, what qualities do you most appreciate in her?
How do you tell the difference between a wise compromise and a betrayal of the divine way and a good compromise?
On the one hand, Moses is celebrated for his wise compromises (95:4-5/1056-59). Jesus found that he had to allow his followers to regard him as the Messiah (137:5.3/1532.1); and he tried to substitute various phrases for the popular idea of the kingdom of God, though he eventually compromised on that matter (170:2.24/1861.6). On the other hand, Jesus refused to compromise with evil (136:8.8/1521.3). Though believers should live peaceably as citizens, if an earthly ruler assumed the role of a religious dictator, gospel believers could only expect “trouble, persecution, and even death (178:1.9/1930.6).
[Jesus] is learning how to plan for the achievement of a higher and distant goal of idealism while he toils earnestly for the attainment of a nearer and immediate goal of necessity. (127:6.12/1405.4)
How does the concept of evolution in The Urantia Book provide a foundation for a philosophy of compromise—and what teachings in the book illustrate when not to compromise?
There is nothing incompatible between sonship in the spiritual kingdom and citizenship in the secular or civil government. It is the believer’s duty to render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and to God the things which are God’s. There cannot be any disagreement between these two requirements, the one being material and the other spiritual, unless it should develop that a Caesar presumes to usurp the prerogatives of God and demand that spiritual homage and supreme worship be rendered to him. In such a case you shall worship only God while you seek to enlighten such misguided earthly rulers and in this way lead them also to the recognition of the Father in heaven. You shall not render spiritual worship to earthly rulers; neither should you employ the physical forces of earthly governments, whose rulers may sometime become believers, in the work of furthering the mission of the spiritual kingdom. 178:1.3/1929.4
Are there any other principles of compromise that guide you? Here is a document on the teaching of Moses: https://sites.google.com/a/kent.edu/jwattles/home/comparative-religious-thought/judaism/moses-concept-of-god
Jesus taught the golden rule positively stated. For a fuller discussion of the rule of living in Judaism and Christianity, see chapters 4 and 5 in Jeffrey Wattles, The Golden Rule (Oxford University Press), 1996. Here is the full six-level interpretation of the rule that Jesus once taught.
195:10.21 (2086.7
Let me now teach you concerning the differing levels of meaning attached to the interpretation of this rule of living, this admonition to ‘do to others that which you desire others to do to you’:
147:4.4 (1650.5) “1. The level of the flesh. Such a purely selfish and lustful interpretation would be well exemplified by the supposition of your question.
147:4.5 (1650.6) “2. The level of the feelings. This plane is one level higher than that of the flesh and implies that sympathy and pity would enhance one’s interpretation of this rule of living.
147:4.6 (1650.7) “3. The level of mind. Now come into action the reason of mind and the intelligence of experience. Good judgment dictates that such a rule of living should be interpreted in consonance with the highest idealism embodied in the nobility of profound self-respect.
147:4.7 (1651.1) “4. The level of brotherly love. Still higher is discovered the level of unselfish devotion to the welfare of one’s fellows. On this higher plane of wholehearted social service growing out of the consciousness of the fatherhood of God and the consequent recognition of the brotherhood of man, there is discovered a new and far more beautiful interpretation of this basic rule of life.
147:4.8 (1651.2) “5. The moral level. And then when you attain true philosophic levels of interpretation, when you have real insight into the rightness and wrongness of things, when you perceive the eternal fitness of human relationships, you will begin to view such a problem of interpretation as you would imagine a high-minded, idealistic, wise, and impartial third person would so view and interpret such an injunction as applied to your personal problems of adjustment to your life situations.
147:4.9 (1651.3) “6. The spiritual level. And then last, but greatest of all, we attain the level of spirit insight and spiritual interpretation which impels us to recognize in this rule of life the divine command to treat all men as we conceive God would treat them. That is the universe ideal of human relationships. And this is your attitude toward all such problems when your supreme desire is ever to do the Father’s will. I would, therefore, that you should do to all men that which you know I would do to them in like circumstances.”(147:4/1650-51)
Consider Jesus’ lesson on forgiveness, in which the social procedure is presented between the parable of the lost sheep (why does Jesus begin with this parable?) and, after Peter’s question, the parable of the unforgiving steward (how does this parable contribute to our understanding of the social procedure?). Why do we so often fail to practice the various steps that Jesus taught? And why do groups of Jesus’ professed followers neglect to establish this procedure?
“The Father in heaven loves his children, and therefore should you learn to love one another; the Father in heaven forgives you your sins; therefore should you learn to forgive one another. If your brother sins against you, go to him and with tact and patience show him his fault. And do all this between you and him alone. If he will listen to you, then have you won your brother. But if your brother will not hear you, if he persists in the error of his way, go again to him, taking with you one or two mutual friends that you may thus have two or even three witnesses to confirm your testimony and establish the fact that you have dealt justly and mercifully with your offending brother. Now if he refuses to hear your brethren, you may tell the whole story to the congregation, and then, if he refuses to hear the brotherhood, let them take such action as they deem wise; let such an unruly member become an outcast from the kingdom.
While you cannot pretend to sit in judgment on the souls of your fellows, and while you may not forgive sins or otherwise presume to usurp the prerogatives of the supervisors of the heavenly hosts, at the same time, it has been committed to your hands that you should maintain temporal order in the kingdom on earth. While you may not meddle with the divine decrees concerning eternal life, you shall determine the issues of conduct as they concern the temporal welfare of the brotherhood on earth. And so, in all these matters connected with the discipline of the brotherhood, whatsoever you shall decree on earth, shall be recognized in heaven. Although you cannot determine the eternal fate of the individual, you may legislate regarding the conduct of the group, for, where two or three of you agree concerning any of these things and ask of me, it shall be done for you if your petition is not inconsistent with the will of my Father in heaven. And all this is ever true, for, where two or three believers are gathered together, there am I in the midst of them.” (159:1.1762-63; Matthew 18:12-35)
How do Jesus and the authors of The Urantia Papers use “ideal types” sometimes in their descriptions, as that concept is explained on LTBG p. 175 note 47? What safeguards do we find in Jesus and the book against racism, sexism, and other forms of angry and contemptuous use of stereotypes?
The question about how there can be so much evil in the world if God is all-powerful and perfectly good is a question to which authors of The Urantia Book return over and over again, illuminating a strikingly many-sided response to the question. The basic answer is evolution. The first universe age, the age of the eternally perfect central universe, has been followed by the second universe age in which the superuniverses must evolve to reach perfection.
It would take too long to quote all the relevant passages. The mass of reflection on a single topic would be a brutal overload for most minds. It is far more educational to come across these passages in reading the entire book from cover to cover; the book is organized not as a philosophy or theology text, but as a presentation of God and the wider universe, planetary history, and the life and teachings of Jesus.
There is also a certain brutality in giving a list that summarizes ideas, since to do so is to abstract them from their fact-meaning-and-value contexts, which are essential to appreciating them as whole persons, not as disembodied intellects.
The real challenge of living, as it relates to this topic, is honestly to face the difficulties of evolution, to understand some of the pertinent reasons why they occur, and to strengthen our positive attitudes as we confirm an ever-stronger faith in the God who is spirit and love, and go forth to serve as we are able in “the loving materialization of the brotherhood of man.” (143:1/1608)
In Part III, Participating in Divine Goodness, the transition to the last chapter of Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, comes in the concluding section, “The facts of suffering and evil and the truths of God’s goodness.” In this document, I postpone that topic until the end, and give you a link to another document that has lots of quotes on the topic.
If you want to study this topic deeply, go to this document on healing. A third of the way down, you will find a section titled “A truckload of Urantia Book quotes on affliction.”
