God—the
Universal Father.
(condensed
as a study aid from Urantia Papers 1-5)
“Be you perfect even as I am
perfect.” This magnificent universal injunction—to strive for the
attainment of the perfection of divinity—is both the first duty and must be the
highest ambition of all God’s struggling mortal children.
Although mortal beings can hardly hope to
be perfect in the infinite sense, it is entirely possible for them, starting
out as they do, to attain the supernal and divine goal that the infinite God
has set for mankind—to seek to attain that level of spiritual perfection
revealed by Jesus of Nazareth during his mortal life on Earth.
And that is the true meaning of that divine
command, “Be you perfect.”
The Universal
Father
First and last—eternally—the infinite God
is a Father. God is a Father in the highest possible sense of that term. He is
eternally motivated by the perfect idealism of divine love and a tender nature
that finds its strongest expression and greatest satisfaction in loving and
being loved.
The First Father is universal spirit,
eternal truth, infinite reality, and father personality—a transcendent reality.
But God is even more. He is a saving person and a loving Father to all who
enjoy spiritual peace on Earth, and who crave to experience personality
survival in death.
Selflessness is inherent in parental love.
God loves not like a father but as a father.
The existence of God is utterly beyond all
possibility of demonstration, except for the God-consciousness of the human
mind and the presence of the God-Spirit that indwells the mortal intellect and
is bestowed as the free gift of the Universal Father. It is not there by right
of possession—but it is designed to be so for all those who choose to survive
the mortal existence.
The Personality
of God
The Universal Father is the acme of divine
personality; he is the origin and destiny of all personality; he is infinite
personality. But although God is much more than a personality as it is
understood by man, we equally well know he cannot be anything less than holy,
just and great, an eternal, infinite, true, beautiful, loving, and good
personality.
Only through a personality approach can we
begin to comprehend the unity of God. To deny the personality of the First
Source and Center leaves only the choice between two philosophical
dilemmas—materialism or pantheism.
God is spirit—spirit personality; man is
also spirit—potential spirit personality. Jesus of Nazareth attained the full
realization of man’s spirit potential. Therefore his life of achieving the
Father’s will becomes man’s most real and ideal revelation of the personality
of God.
The
God-Spirit-Within
There sojourns within each mortal being a
fragment of God, a part and parcel of divinity, the Spirit of God that indwells
each individual. And the presence of this indwelling Spirit of God is evidenced
by:
The intellectual capacity for knowing
God—God-consciousness.
The spiritual urge to find God.
The personality craving to be like God—the
whole-hearted desire to do the Father’s will.
When the mind believes God and the soul
knows God and when, with the fostering of the indwelling Spirit, they all
desire God, then is survival of the individual assured.
The material self has personality and identity,
temporal identity. The pre-personal indwelling God-Spirit also has identity,
eternal identity. Together, the material personality and the spirit
pre-personality are capable of so uniting their creative attributes so as to
bring into existence the surviving entity—the immortal soul.
The Nature of God
The nature of God can be
best understood by the revelation of the Father that Jesus of Nazareth unfolded
in his manifold teachings and in his superb life in the flesh.
The divine nature can also be better
understood by mankind if individuals regard themselves as children of God—and
look up to the Creator as a true and spiritual Father.
God’s primal perfection consists in the
inherent perfection of the goodness of his divine nature. And God’s attributes
of love, truth, beauty, and goodness are definitive of the meaning of all such
terms.
The creature’s need is wholly sufficient to
ensure the full flow of the Father’s tender mercies and saving grace.
The Love of God
The greatest evidence of the goodness of
God and the supreme reason for loving him is the indwelling of his Spirit—the
Spirit that so patiently awaits the hour when you both shall, eternally, become
as one.
When man loses sight of the love of a
personal God, the kingdom of God becomes merely the kingdom of good. Love is
the dominant characteristic of all God’s personal dealings with his creatures.
It is the indwelling Spirit of God that
individualizes the love of God to each human soul. And man’s nearest and
dearest approach to God is by and through love—for God is love.
The Goodness of
God
In the physical universe we may see divine
beauty, in the intellectual world we may discern eternal truth, but the
goodness of God is found only in the spiritual world of personal religious
experience.
In its true essence, religion is a faith
trust in the goodness of God.
In philosophy, God could be great and
absolute, somehow even intelligent and personal, but in religion God must also
be moral, he must be good. Man may fear a great God, but he loves and trust
only a good God. Therefore, to be lovable, God must be good.
This goodness of God is part of the
personality of God. Its full revelation appears only in the personal religious
experience of the believing children of God. The entire mortal concept of God
is transcendently illuminated by the revelatory life of Jesus of Nazareth.
The affectionate heavenly Father, whose
spirit indwells his children on earth, is not a divided personality—one of
justice and one of mercy—neither does it require a mediator to secure the
Father's favor or forgiveness. Divine righteousness is not dominated by strict
retributive justice; God as a father transcends God as a judge.
God is never wrathful, vengeful, or angry.
It is true that wisdom does often restrain his love, while justice conditions
his rejected mercy. His love of righteousness cannot help being exhibited as
equal hatred for sin. The Father is not an inconsistent personality; the divine
unity is perfect.
Divine Truth and
Beauty
Truth is beautiful because it is both
replete and symmetrical. When man searches for truth, he pursues the divinely
real.
Divine truth is best known by its spiritual
flavor.
Truth is coherent, beauty attractive,
goodness stabilizing.
The Attributes of
God
Within the bounds of that which is
consistent with the divine nature, it is literally true, with God all things
are possible.
God is all and in all. But even that is not
all of God.
The creature not only exists in God, but
God also lives in the creature—and in wrongdoing we torment the indwelling
Spirit of God for it needs must go through the consequences of our evil
thinking with the human mind of its own incarceration.
To you, the creature, many of the acts of
the all powerful Creator seem to be heartless and cruel. But this is not true.
God’s doings are all purposeful, intelligent, wise, kind, and eternally
considerate of the best good, not always of the individual, but for the welfare
and best good of all concerned from the lowest to the highest. But many things
do occur on the evolutionary worlds that are not the personal doings of the
Universal Father.
God’s Universal
Knowledge
God knows all things. The divine mind is
conscious of, and conversant with, the thought of all creation. His knowledge
of events is universal and perfect.
The Father’s
Primacy
The infinite and eternal Ruler of the
universes is power, form, energy, process, pattern, principle, presence, and
idealized reality. But he is more. He is personal. And he exercises a sovereign
will, experiences self-consciousness of divinity, executes the mandates of a
creative mind, pursues the satisfaction of the realization of an eternal
purpose, and manifests a Father’s love and affection for his universe children.
God’s Supreme
Rule
In the hearts of men the Universal Father
may not always have his way; but in the conduct and destiny of a planet the
divine plan prevails; the eternal purpose of wisdom and love always triumphs.
God’s Relation to
the Universe
If God should retire as the upholder of all
creation, there would immediately occur a universal collapse. Except for God,
there would be no such thing as reality.
God’s Relation to
the Individual
The Father desires all his creatures to be
in personal communion with him. Therefore settle in your philosophy now: God is
approachable; the way is open.
Likewise is man’s final destiny assured
when individuals become as one with their indwelling God-Spirit thereby
proclaiming to the universe that such an ascender has made an irrevocable
decision to forever live the Father’s will.
The Presence of
God
The divine presence cannot be discovered
anywhere more certainly than in your attempted communion with the indwelling
God-Spirit. What a mistake to dream of a God far off in the skies when the
Universal Father lives within your mind.
As the soul of joint mind and God-Spirit
creation becomes more existent, there also evolves a new phase of soul
consciousness which is increasingly capable both of experiencing the presence
and recognizing the spirit leadings of the indwelling Spirit-of-God.
God in Religion
It requires revelation to show that the
First Cause of Science and the self-existent Unity of Philosophy are the God of
religion, full of mercy, goodness, and love and pledged to effect the eternal
survival of his children on Earth.
God is not only the determiner of
destiny—he is our destiny.
Our Consciousness
of God
God-consciousness is experienced in three
stages—first in mind consciousness, the comprehension of the idea of God;
second in soul consciousness, the realization of the ideal of God; then last
dawns spirit-consciousness, the realization of the spirit reality of God. By
unification of these three factors there dawns the realization of the
personality of God. In achieving this unification man can thrive in the
personal experience of divine companionship and in the spiritual satisfactions
of true worship.
The God of
Personality
All personality , from the lowest mortal
creature to the highest creator dignitary of divine status, is centered
completely in the Universal Father.
God, the Father, is the bestower and the
conservator of every personality. Likewise the Father is the destiny of all
those finite personalities who choose to do the divine will, those who love God
and long to be like him.
God is personally conscious of, and in
personal touch with, all personalities of all levels of self-conscious
existence—and this consciousness is independent of the mission of the
God-Spirit-Within.
“The nature of God can best be
understood by the revelation of the Father which Jesus of Nazareth unfolded in
his manifold teachings and in his superb mortal life in the flesh. The divine
nature can also be better understood if individuals regard themselves as
children of God and look up to the Paradise Creator as their true spiritual
Father.”