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The Urantia Book. Why are some people turned off it and others love it?
Ann Bendall, Nambour, Qld.
What a delight it would be for our Thought Adjuster if we were open-minded when we first pick up The Urantia Book, but the reality is that very few of us are! We will read the book through our perceptual filtering system which will translate its contents to accord with our current ideas of truth and reality.
The Urantia Book can be a revelation, it is mind-expanding, and can be decidedly disconcerting. We might discard a goodly number of our values and beliefs as a consequence of first reading. We might also read what we want to see. And even if we do change some of our values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours of long standing are hard to change.
We will come to the book with our religious ideology. This was first formed in childhood with the advent of our Thought Adjuster whose arrival was dependent upon our beginning to learn that it is "more blessed to give than to receive."(1131). And by the time our Thought Adjuster arrives we have developed a "strong and well-unified egoistic nature."(1131). We have very clear and simple ideas about life, others, and ourselves in relation to life and others.
As we mentally develop throughout childhood these ideas expand and we learn all the socialization rules of our culture. In one culture these might include a sense of achievement in shooting as many 'infidels' as possible; in another culture, the rule might be to ignore 'infidels.'
Perhaps we have been blessed in being reared in a religious environment which placed more emphasis on heaven than hell, as a result of which "the mind of the normal child moves positively, in the emergence of religious consciousness, toward moral righteousness and social ministry, rather than negatively, away from sin and guilt." (1131) In this instance, The Urantia Book will be much less of a culture shock than for those of us reared in the opposite environment.
With adolescence and the extended mental capacity for abstract thinking, we begin to look at the values and beliefs of our parents and society, and start to ask why? There is now the mental capacity, but not necessarily the desire, to question all that has been held out to us as fact and reality. Adolescence is a wonderful period in which not only is there now developed the mental capacity to question but physical development has kept apace the mental, and we can actually enforce our will, our wishes, as well as being able to reject the will and wishes of others.
Now if we were good, loving little children who were taught to be considerate of others, to conform to their wishes, this period of life will cause minimal stress for those around us. However it will cause us distress, for deep down we know that "The self has rights as well as one's neighbors. Neither has exclusive claims upon the attention and service of the individual." (1134) If we resolve our values dilemma by placing consideration for others above our 'higher truth' we normally decide not to think or question. Jesus was not such a 'good' child:
"OF ALL Jesus' earth-life experiences, the fourteenth and fifteenth years were the most crucial. These two years, after he began to be self-conscious of divinity and destiny, and before he achieved a large measure of communication with his indwelling Adjuster, were the most trying of his eventful life on Urantia. It is this period of two years which should be called the great test, the real temptation. No human youth, in passing through the early confusions and adjustment problems of adolescence, ever experienced a more crucial testing than that which Jesus passed through during his transition from childhood to young manhood." (1386)
Time passes and maturity and independence march into our life and then the fun begins as we are forced to recognize that we are responsible for ourselves. The day arrives, with most of us, when we really start to question as to what this life is all about. The clock is flying around, and as we look behind we ask; "Where did it go? What have I done?"
We yearn to know God better. We do not get the same thrill in attending church services. We feel that we are going along through life on someone else's philosophy which, with minimal introspection, is full of holes. And then we are told of The Urantia Book.
We will approach the reading of the book with our religious and personal history, with a set of values and beliefs, some of which we are questioning, some of which we are not, and have consciously or unconsciously decided are beyond question. We can declare that we are 'open-minded', the reality is we are not. For example, a dedicated religionist who is dissatisfied with her church might pick up The Urantia Book. However if she has been heavily indoctrinated with the story that the Bible is the sealed work of God, His final say on paper; if she is very confused as to what the concept 'sin' is, and believes that she must always be wary when she is having a good time because it might be the serpent/apple phenomenon-- then she will experience a great deal of inner turmoil in being a possessor of
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