What is the life in Jesus’ gospel? Why does the Melchizedek say that world religions are waiting to hear, not just the gospel of Jesus, but “the living, spiritual reality of the gospel of Jesus?” (1041.5) Why do the Midwayers call Christianity to learn anew the greatest truths that mortal man can ever hear—not just the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, but “the living gospel of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man” (2086.7)?
My experience of posing this question and following its path of inquiry has powerfully unified my own decades of philosophic study and devotion to the gospel. I hope I can convey some of the thrill to you during our time together.
We can answer initially with a few quotations from our wonderful Urantia Book. First, we recall that the gospel is no slogan, no mere idea of the mind, no static doctrine. Jesus told us that just knowing that we are the children of God “will not suffice if [we] fail personally to faith-grasp the saving truth that [we] are the living spirit sons of the eternal Father” (2053.0). Here’s a commentary.
The dead theory of even the highest religious doctrines is powerless to transform human character or to control mortal behavior. What the world of today needs is the truth which your teacher of old declared: "Not in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit." The seed of theoretical truth is dead, the highest moral concepts without effect, unless and until the divine Spirit breathes upon the forms of truth and quickens the formulas of righteousness. (380.7)
Jesus made it plain in a resurrection appearance: "
Your mission to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-revealing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall consist in the life which you will live among men--the actual and living experience of loving men and serving them, even as I have loved and served you." (2043.1)
Recall that on Pentecost, once the Spirit of Truth endowed the believers with power, they went forth boldly and courageously. “The Master lives in the hearts of these evangelists; God is not a doctrine in their minds; he has become a living presence in their souls” (2066.2).
What is the life of the gospel? The previous passages give a basic answer, and if their teachings are embraced wholeheartedly, the answer is sufficient for most purposes. But is it the end of the answer? It is the end of our question? Of course there is more.
Jesus told his apostles that they should not be surprised if they "fail to grasp the full meaning of the gospel. You are but finite, mortal men, and that which I have taught you is infinite, divine, and eternal” (1961.4). Thus a simple answer could never convey to the human mind the fullness of the gospel. Of course, even after we have exhausted the human capacity for comprehension, there will still be more, infinitely, divinely, eternally more ahead of us. So let us push onwards. We are not alone in our inquiry, for “in the gospel of the kingdom there resides the mighty Spirit of Truth” (1930.3).
Let us pause for a silent minute to attune as best we can to the Spirit of Truth before going further.
1. The Life of Truth
Truth, in the highest sense, is whatever we need to realize spiritually. But what we need to realize spiritually changes due to the constant change of ourselves and our circumstances. Truth is more a who than a what, more a person than a doctrine. And truth is a kaleidoscope with countless facets. Truth is many-sided. In your practical daily experience of communion you know very well what I mean. One day you receive a fresh sense of the meaning and value of a particular truth theme, just the illumination you need to meet the upcoming challenges of the day. The next day, though, when you try to return to yesterday’s revelatory insight, some of the vitality has receded from your mind. You need a fresh infusion, because today’s challenges are different. You are now ready for a new vision of another phase of truth. The Spirit brings forth the truth we need and can receive. The fluidity of truth is the Spirit’s movement, endowing first one theme and then another with spiritual vitality in our mind. One of the best reasons to study The Urantia Book is to provision the mind with a broad keyboard of themes on which the spirit can play, activating the truths we need.
In some of his discourses Jesus went to the depths of Deity and reality; let’s briefly attempt the same. The life of truth derives from the process of the First Source and Center.
God is immutable; but not until you achieve Paradise status can you even begin to understand how God can pass from simplicity to complexity, from identity to variation, from quiescence to motion, from infinity to finitude, from the divine to the human, and from unity to duality and triunity. (58.7)
Study the gospel, and you find it stated as a single concept, as a dual concept, and as a cluster of three or more concepts. See the simplicity and complexity of the gospel. Know the quietude of contemplation, meditating on its facets, and the dynamism of its activation in your soul. It is a divine gift from Jesus and a trust committed to human hands. It is presently promulgated by the Spirit of Truth. The life of the gospel encompasses all these phases and more.
The section in The Urantia Book which teaches most fully about the life of truth is the one titled “The Spirit of Truth” (1949; 181:5). Let us take the time to listen to it again. I will read four paragraphs, adding comments after the first, second, and fourth.
The new helper which Jesus promised to send into the hearts of believers, to pour out upon all flesh, is the Spirit of Truth. This divine endowment is not the letter or law of truth, neither is it to function as the form or expression of truth. The new teacher is the conviction of truth, the consciousness and assurance of true meanings on real spirit levels. And this new teacher is the spirit of living and growing truth, expanding, unfolding, and adaptative truth. (1949.3)
Living truth is growing: in other words, its development cannot be artificially, intellectually plotted. It is expanding: you have more to say. It unfolds: new themes emerge as implications of what was given previously. It is adaptive: it adjusts to the needs of the hearers.
Divine truth is a spirit-discerned and living reality. Truth exists only on high spiritual levels of the realization of divinity and the consciousness of communion with God. You can know the truth, and you can live the truth; you can experience the growth of truth in the soul and enjoy the liberty of its enlightenment in the mind, but you cannot imprison truth in formulas, codes, creeds, or intellectual patterns of human conduct. When you undertake the human formulation of divine truth, it speedily dies. The post-mortem salvage of imprisoned truth, even at best, can eventuate only in the realization of a peculiar form of intellectualized glorified wisdom. Static truth is dead truth, and only dead truth can be held as a theory. Living truth is dynamic and can enjoy only an experiential existence in the human mind. (1949.4)
Sometimes we think of the fatherhood of God on the level of fact, and sometimes we experience the truth of the Father on the level of value. Sometimes we acknowledge the brotherhood of man on the level of fact and sometimes we experience it on the level of value. Such changes are normal and inevitable. However, if we wish to receive or give a genuine expression of the gospel, something has to be alive on spirit-level experience. If we speak of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man without any value-level realization, the gospel is not happening. The words are there, but they are empty. Good news can only manifest if we speak the truth from a place of spiritual realization.
Intelligence grows out of a material existence which is illuminated by the presence of the cosmic mind. Wisdom comprises the consciousness of knowledge elevated to new levels of meaning and activated by the presence of the universe endowment of the adjutant of wisdom. Truth is a spiritual reality value experienced only by spirit-endowed beings who function upon supermaterial levels of universe consciousness, and who, after the realization of truth, permit its spirit of activation to live and reign within their souls.
The true child of universe insight looks for the living Spirit of Truth in every wise saying. The God-knowing individual is constantly elevating wisdom to the living-truth levels of divine attainment; the spiritually unprogressive soul is all the while dragging the living truth down to the dead levels of wisdom and to the domain of mere exalted knowledge. (1949.5-6)
These last paragraphs point to a danger. It is true that the information we are given about the gospel is most exquisite; and it is true that the wisdom of the gospel is the pinnacle of philosophy. But we could take our response to the gospel no further than to create evangelosophy. We could develop groups centered around intellectual teachers rather than a family activated by service. To thirsty souls we could offer deep thinking instead of the water of life. But if we remember that truth is a gift, and that the mind is a gift, and if we listen and interpret and respond in gratitude, we’ll be less likely to fall into that trap or to stay in it for long.
Jesus explained the life of the gospel in terms of growth.
This gospel of the kingdom is a living truth. I have told you it is like the leaven in the dough, like the grain of mustard seed; and now I declare that it is like the seed of the living being, which, from generation to generation, while it remains the same living seed, unfailingly unfolds itself in new manifestations and grows acceptably in channels of new adaptation to the peculiar needs and conditions of each successive generation. The revelation I have made to you is a living revelation, and I desire that it shall bear appropriate fruits in each individual and in each generation in accordance with the laws of spiritual growth, increase, and adaptative development. From generation to generation this gospel must show increasing vitality and exhibit greater depth of spiritual power. (1931.6-1932.0)
The Master’s teaching gives us pause. Do our lives show greater gospel vitality and spiritual power than in previous generations—including generations who gave their lives for the truth as they understood it?
To understand the life of the gospel, we must understand how it functions in changing historical circumstances. Because history moves and changes, the gospel changes and grows. Here’s the quote that explains how the Spirit of Truth works.
Jesus lived on earth and taught a gospel which redeemed man from the superstition that he was a child of the devil and elevated him to the dignity of a faith son of God. Jesus' message, as he preached it and lived it in his day, was an effective solvent for man's spiritual difficulties in that day of its statement. And now that he has personally left the world, he sends in his place his Spirit of Truth, who is designed to live in man and, for each new generation, to restate the Jesus message so that every new group of mortals to appear upon the face of the earth shall have a new and up-to-date version of the gospel, just such personal enlightenment and group guidance as will prove to be an effective solvent for man's ever-new and varied spiritual difficulties. (2060.6)
Thus the very notion of a gospel implies that there are primary, central spiritual truths for an entire generation. And if we want to know what today’s gospel is, we have to get it from the Spirit of Truth, who takes the cornucopia of central spiritual truth and ministers it to the spiritual difficulties people are facing today. The more we become sensitive to people’s spiritual difficulties and the more we know of the many facets of Jesus’ gospel, the better we may sense what the Spirit of Truth is saying, and the more readily we may spontaneously and unconsciously succeed in expressing the Spirit of Truth ourselves.
On a practical level we observe this strategy in Jesus’ preaching. There was usually an edge to the Master’s proclamation. He would usually express it in a single sentence. But he had a continually updated sense of the needs of his hearers, what sort of obstacle was blocking their fuller realization. He would pitch his message to help them past that obstacle. He would often name it directly, as he graciously moved to minister truth to that place of need. In his first magnificent Sermon on the Kingdom, Jesus directly challenged the notions of Jewish privilege and a military Messiah. When he spoke to those seeking healing at the pool of Bethesda, his opening sentence was, “Many of you are here, sick and afflicted, because of your many years of wrong living” (1649.3). The Master’s gracious presence and musical voice courageously expressed a love that touched truthfully wherever it was needed to bring new life.
Let’s add a few more thoughts on the life of truth. “The Father is living love, and this life of the Father is in his Sons” (2097.3). Even in a biological context, we are told of the vital spiritual side of life (403#6); “the essence of life is spirit” (467.3). No wonder “the joy of this outpoured [Spirit of Truth], when it is consciously experienced in human life, is a tonic for health, a stimulus for mind, and an unfailing energy for the soul” (2065.7). Thus, when the mind embraces divine truth we material mortals can enjoy spiritual experience, since in our entire personality system—from the neurons of the brain through our highest thoughts and feelings to the indwelling spirit—everything aligns in harmony with the living God.
Let us now take one minute to meditate on the life of truth, and then we’ll have a few minutes for discussion.
2. The Many-Sided Gospel
The gospel is the Son’s merciful expression of eternal truth that enables us to begin our quest for Paradise perfection. It is from the gospel that we learn of the eternal life that we receive through faith. If there are, ultimately, two great phases of reality, undeified reality and deified reality, the miracle of faith initiates our transformation from the first phase to the second phase.
The life of the gospel has everything to do with its many-sidedness. Any one-sided formulation of truth flattens into dogma and dies.
The maturity we need to share in the fifth epochal revelation—and in revealed religion, which is “excellent as well as genuine”—requires us to be “sufficiently intelligent and tolerant to avoid clashes of mind and wars of opinions” (278.3). Present-day professed followers of Jesus are divided, to no small extent, because we read texts and emphasize different sides of a many-sided truth.
It is just because the gospel of Jesus was so many-sided that within a few centuries students of the records of his teachings became divided up into so many cults and sects. This pitiful subdivision of Christian believers results from failure to discern in the Master's manifold teachings the divine oneness of his matchless life. (1866.3)
So let us explore the many sides of the Master’s gospel, and let us see them all in the unity of his life.
I do not propose any complete list of the many sides of the gospel. I am too afraid of the philosopher’s tendency to create static systems of doctrine. What I observe is Jesus on the move, spreading truth as spontaneously as a sower casts seed upon the ground; and to reduce the phases of concepts that emerge so beautifully in the Master’s teaching to a list betrays its life. So there is no gesture toward completeness here, but I would mention a few more themes.
Many readers are not clearly aware that Jesus’ many-sided gospel contains not only many inclusive affirmations of the brotherhood of all humankind, but also a special concept of faith-sonship.
When men and women ask what shall we do to be saved, you shall answer, Believe this gospel of the kingdom; accept divine forgiveness. By faith recognize the indwelling spirit of God, whose acceptance makes you a son of God. (1682.4)
As you go onward preaching this gospel of the kingdom, you will have to find for yourselves new associates. I have sent you forth two and two during the times of your training, but now that I am leaving you, after you have recovered from the shock, you will go out alone, and to the ends of the earth, proclaiming this good news: That faith-quickened mortals are the sons of God." (1957.2)
The kingdom, to the Jews, was the Israelite community; to the gentiles it became the Christian church. To Jesus the kingdom was the sum of those individuals who had confessed their faith in the fatherhood of God, thereby declaring their wholehearted dedication to the doing of the will of God, thus becoming members of the spiritual brotherhood of man. (1865.1)
This side of the gospel means that we can invite people to join the family of God as well as proclaim at other times that everyone already is a brother or sister in the universal family.
We are to proclaim this gospel to Christianity, to Hinduism and Buddhism, and to all religions. One reason why conservative religion resists the thought that all men and women are the sons and daughters of God is that such an inclusive teaching appears to betray the importance of saving faith. We are told to approach other religions with a recognition of truths held in common. While we should never compromise our proclamation of the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man, we may also make clear our recognition of the faith-family as a sturdy side of Jesus’ gospel message.
One of the techniques that Jesus used—and we can, too—in order to keep the living gospel from becoming dogma and doctrine is to vary the meanings associated with such a key term as “kingdom.” Do you believe it? Are you ready to learn how to do it? By using terms such as family of God or kingdom or son or daughter of God with different meanings on different occasions, you can both emphasize truths we hold in common and also change the will of people and the course of evolution (1863.5)!
One of the most central principles of teaching in The Urantia Book and in the ministry of Jesus is the principle of receptivity. Don’t teach what people are not ready to receive. Don’t cast pearls before those whose appetites are only material. Don’t try showing the beauties of the temple to those who are not yet in the temple. Does this principle imply that our ministry should normally introduce the The Urantia Book to people after they prove receptive to the gospel?
After the feeding of the five thousand and the disillusionment of those who wanted to make Jesus a king and the sifting of the kingdom that saw ninety percent of Jesus’ fans abandon the gospel movement, those that remained were more spiritually receptive. And Jesus, we are told, began to teach “the higher and more spiritual phases of the new gospel of the kingdom--divine sonship, spiritual liberty, and eternal salvation” (1704.5).
Two comments are in order regarding the theme of divine sonship. First, divine sonship pertains to all believers. The idea is not that believers are divine, but that living faith brings a divine quality of relation between the believer and the others in the family. Jesus said, “When you believe in this new gospel of divine sonship, my Father's will becomes your will, and you are elevated to the high position of the free children of God, liberated sons of the kingdom" (1589.0).
Second, divine sonship as a gospel theme does not totally exclude the epochal fact of Jesus combined nature. Most of the time, we read warnings of the dangers of proclaiming the epochal fact of Jesus instead of the gospel itself. Premature proclamation of the epochal fact by Anna and Simeon in the temple almost got Jesus killed. No basic gospel formulation mentions Jesus’ divine sonship. Nevertheless, there is one remark in the book that opens a different door.
Jesus founded the religion of personal experience in doing the will of God and serving the human brotherhood; Paul founded a religion in which the glorified Jesus became the object of worship and the brotherhood consisted of fellow believers in the divine Christ. In the bestowal of Jesus these two concepts were potential in his divine-human life, and it is indeed a pity that his followers failed to create a unified religion which might have given proper recognition to both the human and the divine natures of the Master as they were inseparably bound up in his earth life and so gloriously set forth in the original gospel of the kingdom. (2092.4-2093.0)
In other words, at the limit, when we move from expressing the gospel in terms of a single theme or a dual concept or three or more thoughts, when we express the gospel at length, in response to the inquiry of a receptive soul, we may well include mention of the epochal fact.
The gospel is primarily a proclamation of the truth of relationships, but it also touches on the beauties of the realm of feeling and the goodness values of our active response. Jesus once characterized the gospel as “the supreme desire to do the Father's will coupled with the supreme joy of the faith realization of sonship with God . . .” (1931.2); and he sometimes expressed the gospel in terms of its practical implications.
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)
The life of the gospel unites its simplicities and complexities, the movement back and forth between quick expressions and extended discourses. Let us close this segment by recalling a few of the simplest expressions of the gospel. "God is your Father, and religion--my gospel--is nothing more nor less than the believing recognition of the truth that you are his son.” (1590.5) "If you would but believe that my Father loves you with an infinite love, then you are in the kingdom of God." (1537.4) “In preaching the gospel of the kingdom, you are simply teaching friendship with God.” (1766.5)
Again let us take one minute for silent contemplation of the many-sided gospel and then a few minutes for discussion.
3. Our Role in Forming Concepts
The Master, loving with his mind as well as with his soul, constructed concepts. He constructed a concept of God, and he constructed a concept of the gospel. He began concept construction early in life. Remember that a concept is not merely an intellectual idea, but an intellectual and spiritual achievement.
Things are time conditioned, but truth is timeless. The more truth you know, the more truth you are, the more of the past you can understand and of the future you can comprehend.
Truth is inconcussible--forever exempt from all transient vicissitudes, albeit never dead and formal, always vibrant and adaptable--radiantly alive. But when truth becomes linked with fact, then both time and space condition its meanings and correlate its values. Such realities of truth wedded to fact become concepts and are accordingly relegated to the domain of relative cosmic realities. (1297.3-4)
In other words, the life of truth meets fact, and the result is a concept.
Here’s how Jesus formed the great concept of his early teenage years. This paragraph is full of lessons about what a concept truly is and how to construct one.
Throughout this and the two following years Jesus suffered great mental distress as the result of his constant effort to adjust his personal views of religious practices and social amenities to the established beliefs of his parents. He was distraught by the conflict between the urge to be loyal to his own convictions and the conscientious admonition of dutiful submission to his parents; his supreme conflict was between two great commands which were uppermost in his youthful mind. The one was: "Be loyal to the dictates of your highest convictions of truth and righteousness." The other was: "Honor your father and mother, for they have given you life and the nurture thereof." However, he never shirked the responsibility of making the necessary daily adjustments between these realms of loyalty to one's personal convictions and duty toward one's family, and he achieved the satisfaction of effecting an increasingly harmonious blending of personal convictions and family obligations into a masterful concept of group solidarity based upon loyalty, fairness, tolerance, and love.
What do we learn here? First, the young Jesus forged a concept of group solidarity through years of struggle. For each of us, there is a zone of conflict through which we must pass as we establish the spiritual primacy of the fatherhood of God as the governing power in our lives. For each of us, there is a struggle to overcome our material urges and selfish impulses. Our destiny is to grow into “the service-discovery of spiritual reality and the ministry-revelation of the goodness of spirit values” (1112.7). Part of us prefers to use the powers available to us to avoid Jesus way of life. “Jesus chose to establish the kingdom of heaven in the hearts of mankind by natural, ordinary, difficult, and trying methods, just such procedures as his earth children must subsequently follow in their work of enlarging and extending that heavenly kingdom” (1521.1).
Second, Jesus’ teenage struggle involved fidelity to both sides of a tension: spiritual idealism and legitimate earthly duties. It would have been easy to give up one side or the other. Either go the way of the fanatic idealist and revolt against the fabric of evolutionary human community, or go the way of the over-compromised cynic who sacrifices his link with truth. Will we stay engaged with Christianity and Buddhism and Hinduism and the other religions of our planet as the revelators suggest, or will we go off by ourselves and spend most of our available volunteer energies with and for other Urantia Book readers? If we engage with an existing religious community, will we maintain vital links to the truths and associations of the newest epochal revelation?
Third, the ingredients in Jesus’ concept of group solidarity were virtues—loyalty, fairness, tolerance, and love. We need loyalty to the gospel and to the gospel movement. In each one of the Master’s eight resurrection appearances to groups of believers, he reiterated the call to go forth to all the world proclaiming the gospel.
We need fairness so as not to be hostile in reacting to those who attack the fatherhood of God or who cherish the concept of atonement.
We need tolerance and patience and a respect for the gradualness of evolution to participate wisely in the unfolding of a new epochal revelation, even as we learn to proclaim gospel truths in bold lives.
We need love in order to accomplish anything of cosmic significance. In worldly terms, much may be apparently accomplished without love, but impatience, anger, pride, and combativeness do advance the cause of God a whit.
Jesus’ teenage struggle that formed his concept of group solidarity prepared him to form his adult concept of the gospel. How did he do it?
“The human Jesus saw God as being holy, just, and great, as well as being true, beautiful, and good. All these attributes of divinity he focused in his mind as the "will of the Father in heaven." Jesus' God was at one and the same time "The Holy One of Israel" and "The living and loving Father in heaven." (2087.2)
In other words, Jesus selected a central theme and related every relevant, worthy insight to this theme. He thus wove a fabric of associations in his mind and soul, thus forming his concept of God.
The faith of Jesus visualized all spirit values as being found in the kingdom of God; therefore he said, "Seek first the kingdom of heaven." Jesus saw in the advanced and ideal fellowship of the kingdom the achievement and fulfillment of the "will of God." The very heart of the prayer which he taught his disciples was, "Your kingdom come; your will be done." Having thus conceived of the kingdom as comprising the will of God, he devoted himself to the cause of its realization with amazing self-forgetfulness and unbounded enthusiasm. (2088.3).
Again we see the process of selecting a central theme and relating everything relevant and worthy to that vital center. Do not forget Jesus’ struggle, ending in the compromise of accepting the term “kingdom of God” instead of, for example, “family of God.” But once he had decided on that compromise in order to stay in adequate communication with the people with whom he was working, he built on it without further hesitation.
What factors will go into our concept of the gospel? What struggles? What compromises? What intellectual and spiritual phases? What facts? What dialogues with what religious traditions? What virtues, what fruits of the spirit, do we need to cultivate in order to have the necessary ingredients for our concept?
If we are to form our concept of the fatherhood of God, we must cultivate our most direct experience of God in worship. Worship goes beyond the self-reminding techniques of prayer; worship goes beyond the desire and need of the creature. Worship arises “as a natural and spontaneous reaction to the recognition of the Father’s matchless personality and because of his lovable nature and adorable attributes” (65.5). Thus we need utterly to soak in the revelation of the personality and nature and attributes of God, both in Part I and in Jesus’ revelation and elsewhere. We need to follow the Master’s total dedication, “ever deferring his slightest wish” to the Father’s will.
If we are to form our concept of the brotherhood of man, we must learn “an intelligent and wise affection for each of our fellow mortals” (1206.7). We must ascend step by step to the sixth level of the practice of the golden rule (1650-51). We must learn the ways of compromise, mercy, and divine responses to conflict. We must learn from Jesus the way of spiritual brotherhood, practicing “the service-discovery of spiritual reality and the ministry-revelation of the goodness of spirit values” (1112.7). We must go further to learn to promote social brotherhood—learning languages, traveling, reading the literature of diverse peoples, uplifting our ethical practices, exercising patience under international provocation (597#6). And we each well know the severe challenges of getting along with people in difficult circumstances.
We would do well, furthermore, to deepen our concept of love. We need to see love not only as a feeling that we all immediately enjoy at conferences or in communion, but as the culmination of a full process of growth. The Divine Counselor calls for the construction of a philosophy of living “out of the enlarged and exquisitely integrated modern concepts of cosmic truth, universe beauty, and divine goodness.” He goes on to say, “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” (p. 43.3). Elsewhere we are told that love is the sum total of truth, beauty, and goodness, “man’s perception of God has his spirit Father” (648.1; 56:10:17). Notice that love is the culminating realization. Notice how much goes into the preparation for this culmination. The same point is implicit later in a discussion of how we may cooperate consciously with the Thought Adjuster. The author does not simply go straight to the core of the answer—loving God and our fellow human beings. There is a preceding teaching that indicates a path that leads up to love: “Choosing to respond to divine leading; sincerely basing the human life on the highest consciousness of truth, beauty, and goodness, and then co-ordinating these qualities of divinity through wisdom, worship, faith, and love” (1206.5).
Notice how Jesus spoke of the levels of the golden rule. Level six is the spiritual level, to treat people as God would, as Jesus would. We all want to say—Yes! That’s the level for me. But Jesus plainly sets forth the levels as a sequence, implying that we cannot start out on level six. We first have to satisfy other levels, such as the level of the mind. There is a level of brotherly love that is defined in terms of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Then comes the moral level, which requires philosophic insight into the “eternal fitness of human relationships.” Only then does one ascend to the spiritual level. This is not to say that we cannot love until we have achieved great intellectual heights, but it is to remark that we often forget that the fullness of love requires years of devoted living, mobilizing the full powers of our personality.
Of course it’s a tall order, but with all the superhuman assistance so freely given and the support of our brothers and sisters, year by year we will accomplish it. By our struggles, our loyalties, our friendships, and the qualities of character that we grow with God, we form concepts that serve us magnificently in prayer and worship and service. We use concepts in the sublime thinking of prayer, holding up a thought to be filled or adjusted. Our concept of God is the trampoline for worship. Our concept of others and their needs directs our service.
Let’s take another silent minute to meditate on your favorite concept then a few minutes for discussion.
4. The Gospel Movement, anyone?
After all this, who’s ready? Who wants to come forward wholeheartedly to be part of the life of Jesus’ gospel movement? There’s no organization to join, there are no dues—but your volunteer service may cost you everything you are and have.
In three passages toward the end of Part IV, the Midwayers use the term “the gospel movement.” Judas deserted the gospel movement (1910.3; 176:4:1). The Jewish rulers thought the gospel movement had been crushed (2045.1). Jerusalem was the cradle of the early gospel movement (1913.2). Why do the Midwayers use exactly the same phrase three times? Aren’t they suggesting something? We are surely in a position to put the pieces together. The life of the gospel expresses itself in planetary history as the gospel movement!
On the surface it’s a demand, a duty. It is a fact that in every resurrection appearance to believers—not just to apostles but to believers with families and jobs—Jesus restated the invitation-command to proclaim the gospel to all the world. In truth, however, the call is an invitation to experience friendship with God as you never have before. Genuine participation in the gospel movement moves you so far beyond duty-consciousness, that you wonder why you resisted the call for so long.
If you sign up, not with a pen but with your life, you will be led to into a quantum leap of personal development. Is this a plunge into fanaticism? Does the dangerous narrowness of the crusader come over you? No. Following Jesus’ direction, you will be led to develop a balance of character. The philosophy of living in truth, beauty, and goodness on physical, intellectual, and spiritual levels shows you how to integrate your character so as to avoid the crusader’s narrow fanaticism. Jesus taught:
Consider the Greeks, who have a science without religion, while the Jews 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 co-ordination, learn to exemplify in your lives this beautiful wholeness of righteousness, your fellow men will then seek after you that they may gain what you have so acquired. (1726.1-2)
You will therefore be far more successful in introducing The Urantia Book, not because you are pushing the book on people more enthusiastically, not because you are throwing the book at the world more artfully, but because you are becoming more attractive yourself in the integrated life to which the Master and the revelators are calling you.
Many people around the world are devoting themselves to intelligent service in social, economic, political, educational, and religious causes. But there are very, very few who devote themselves to the Master’s gospel in the way that powers the path to a spiritual renaissance.
No, you don’t have to abandon other commitments. You just need to organize your life so that there’s time to focus on deepening your concept of, and receptivity to, the living truths of this gospel. And you need to become more ready to minister gospel truth to those you meet and more knowledgeable and experienced and skilled in interacting with diverse others.
Last semester I received a new spiritual awareness of the fatherhood of God. My love for my students naturally grew as well. More and more spiritually hungry students came to me, and I introduced more to The Urantia Book than I have previously been able to do in years. I improved at whetting appetites with the teachings without mentioning the book. I used concepts, phrases, and quotes. The people came. Does this mean that I’m good at it? No, just that I got a little better. I’m still just a beginner. But I discovered that what someone told me about sales is true in religion: you can’t sell what you don’t really enjoy using yourself. The more I grew in the gospel, the more I could help others in their spiritual quest.
My courses in ethics and world religions have become very successful because of the projects I assign. The courses are not centered on books, but around inviting students to live the highest ethical and religious teachings—adapted to what feels right to them. In a high proportion of cases, people’s lives are changed. One student said, “My life was jump-started.” People who have grown up all their lives being told to love God and the neighbor are assigned to live that for a month and write about the experience in the context of a study of Judaism. Relationships with roommates, parents, boy-friends, girl-friends, co-workers get transformed. People find a new sense of self-respect. Religion gets real like never before. I’ve started putting some of the heart-moving stories on websites.
No presentation or sermon can do that—only the actual experience of going into life with a definite focus and a high purpose for a sustained period of time. A good presentation can inspire you for an hour, but in three weeks it will seem like nothing ever happened.
I do not have the power of a classroom teacher to assign you a project, to nudge you into action. And of course it would be presumptuous of me, since I have so much to learn from each of you. Nevertheless, you have the power to choose and commit yourselves. If you do so, I pray that you do not restrict your ministry to students of The Urantia Book. Most readers devote most of their energies in teaching and preaching and writing to the service of other readers. Surely some are following the will of God in so doing. But as a group we need to shift the proportion. We need to learn to reach out with the truths of the gospel to those who are not already readers.
Let us conclude with a minute of prayer for the gospel movement before we begin our last conversation for this session.
Summer 2002