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More on 'Our Challenge.'
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. (43)
In attempting to analyse what this means for us as individuals, several things are worthy of note. Keeping in mind that the source material for our philosophy is to be the cosmic truth, universe beauty, and divine goodness content of the Urantia revelation, note that:
We are not asked to promote the revelation itself, implying that giving away or selling a Urantia Book to all and sundry is not what is required of us.
We are not asked to promote any one religion--not even one based upon the life of Jesus as it is told in the Urantia Revelation.
And the source material, though contained within the Urantia revelation, need not necessarily be original to it.
Because of the way the Urantia revelation came to be, and its content, we must assume that something about its central figure, Jesus of Nazareth, is important for us. And surely this must include his faith and the central role that the "will of the Father" played in his life.
Jesus' faith was so real and all-encompassing that it absolutely swept away any spiritual doubts and effectively destroyed every conflicting desire. Nothing was able to tear him away from the spiritual anchorage of this fervent, sublime, and undaunted faith. Even in the face of apparent defeat or in the throes of disappointment and threatening despair, he calmly stood in the divine presence free from fear and fully conscious of spiritual invincibility. Jesus enjoyed the invigorating assurance of the possession of unflinching faith, and in each of life's trying situations he unfailingly exhibited an unquestioning loyalty to the Father's will. And this superb faith was undaunted even by the cruel and crushing threat of an ignominious death. (2087)
Jesus brought to God, as a man of the realm, the greatest of all offerings: the consecration and dedication of his own will to the majestic service of doing the divine will. Jesus always and consistently interpreted religion wholly in terms of the Father's will…. The secret of his unparalleled religious life was this consciousness of the presence of God; and he attained it by intelligent prayer and sincere worship--unbroken communion with God--and not by leadings, voices, visions, or extraordinary religious practices. (2088)
Is it possible for mere man to have such faith? Or such consciousness of the presence of God? And such dedication to the doing of God's will?
The answer is given in the revelation itself. In a discussion with Immanuel, Jesus' task is described as "to exhibit in his life in the flesh those transcendent possibilities attainable by a God-knowing human." (1328)
What is meant by "transcendent possibilities?"
We are told that all such possibilities are taught to us directly by our own personal indwelling Spirit of the Father.
All men recognize the morality of this universal human urge to be unselfish and altruistic. The humanist ascribes the origin of this urge to the natural working of the material mind; the religionist more correctly recognizes that the truly unselfish drive of mortal mind is in response to the inner spirit leadings of the indwelling God-Spirit. (1134)
What derives from a spirit source is "of the spirit." Spiritual and transcendent possibilities then are spiritual meanings and values that derive from spirit sources.
Hence the philosophy of living we are asked to construct surely must derive from the exquisitely integrated meanings and values presented in the Urantia revelation or given to us personally from our indwelling Spirit source.
By far the most effective way of presenting and distributing what we have learned is simply by living it.
Despite the many abuses injected into Christianity and Jesus' message by mankind over almost 2000 years, it has still been the world's major source of spiritual truth, beauty, and goodness absorbed into human societies during that time.
And all because one man lived the life he did, yet leaving no written record!!
His unwritten message : Follow me--live as I lived.
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