|
Spirit Unity
"What I require of you, my apostles, is spirit unity--and that you can experience in the joy of your united dedication to the wholehearted doing of the will of my Father in heaven. You do not have to see alike or feel alike or even think alike in order spiritually to be alike."
One of the greatest impedances to unity among people of the Western world is an intolerance generated by our adherence to the either/or thinking of Aristotelian logic--which is in stark contrast to the both/and logic of Eastern philosophy.
Because we are so ingrained with this one-eyed, one track, either/or, vision, we are confronted with fundamentalism in its many guises. This is the logic that asserts, "either the Bible is the infallible word of God or it is a load of rubbish"--sometimes expressed as, "if you cannot trust the Bible what can you trust?" And of course the extremists of Islam and materialism follow this same mode of thought.
The same mode of thinking spills over for adherents of The Urantia Book, immediately causing division with various conflicting groups itching to do battle for their cause.
In reality there is very little in this world that is either totally black or totally white--a fact nicely illustrated in that both black and white include all the colors of the rainbow.
Most comparisons are really relative--sweet or sour, cold or hot, big or small, long or short, fast or slow, evolutionism or creationism, nice or nasty, and all shades in between. Even things like "in motion" or "at rest" are really relative, having all shades in between. Ask Einstein.
Moderation may be creeping up on us! Among the various commentaries in a recent edition of a Roman Catholic Bible, and attributed to an "infallible" Pope Pius XII, there is a statement that the Bible contains the word of God in the words of men!
How long will it take for Urantia Book fundamentalists to admit that this "revelation" also contains the divine word in the words of lesser beings, including men?
Perhaps our propensity to embrace extremes stems from remnants of tribalism and the herd instinct that simmer in our subconscious, and rise to consciousness as an overwhelming desire to "belong."
This innate desire expresses itself among adolescents with their urgent need to conform with the mores of the peer group with whom they immediately associate--regardless of the long term harm they do themselves. And what greater demonstration of its factuality is there than the extreme violence that breaks out among the supporters of various sporting teams.
The human being surely is a complex animal. Strangely enough there is a way out that can actually utilize our weakness. The Urantia Book informs us about our tendency to isolate part of life and make it our "religion." And it provides a solution--we grant irrevocably to the God-within, unrestricted freedom to reflect God's love by expressing itself in our personal lives.
"The philosophic elimination of religious fear and the steady progress of science add greatly to the mortality of false gods; and even though these casualties of man-made deities may momentarily befog the spiritual vision, they eventually destroy that ignorance and superstition which so long obscured the living God of eternal love. The relation between the creature and the Creator is a living experience, a dynamic religious faith, which is not subject to precise definition. To isolate part of life and call it religion is to disintegrate life and to distort religion. And this is just why the God of worship claims all allegiance or none." (1124)
You cannot be even mildly fanatical about a football team--or any other worldly cause--if you have already given all your allegiance to God.
|
|
