Jeffrey Wattles, November 1998

Suppose a celestial inspector showed up and asked for a report of our stewardship with the teachings of The Urantia Book. The inspector asks us, among other things, what we have done to take the teachings to our planet. Yes, we have a noble beginning with our translations; we have a fledgling study group movement that needs a lot of nurturing; we have just begun preparing persons for teaching and leadership. We are making the book available and introducing it to prospective readers. We are rich in conferences and publications for students of The Urantia Book. Readers discuss the book and other things on a variety of Internet venues. But now we are forced to face again the question of what we have done to take the teachings of the book to the planet?

Suppose we hear that question and petition to postpone the reckoning. "Come back in five years," we say, "and we shall have a better answer." Suppose the celestial observer accepts our request. We have five years. We have no need for foolish haste. But we do need to focus more effectively on an important task. How shall we spend our five years? The celestial observer has vanished, leaving us to choose where to focus our efforts. We would like clearer, more specific, personal guidance for today and tomorrow, but we are on our own.

To be sure, much of our best teaching occurs in an unplanned way, "as we pass by." But there are also opportunities for the person who takes advantage of teamwork and organization focused on a specific project. Since there are so many good projects, the question arises of what projects we shall select.

Two caveats before proceeding. First, the Father’s will for your life is individually tailored to your gifts and opportunities. These remarks about projects offer context, not commands. If you ambitiously put a large time commitment into a high leverage project and thereby reject part of the Adjuster’s plan for your life, you and the mosaic of cooperation suffer. Moreover, some of us honestly cannot devote more time to anything. We are so busy in the years of parenting and working that we take special comfort in the fact that while Jesus did these things for fourteen years he did very little teaching. He studied. He planned his ministry. He got to know people. He learned to live the Father’s will. But he did not begin significant teaching until he came to a time in his life when he could work just part time. Then, on the Roman tour, he was ready to shift into second gear. One of the great things about being just a disciple is that you are not expected to perform as an evangelist or apostle. Public preaching, for example, is not expected. Long hours of devotion to spreading the gospel are not expected. And some of us are legitimately so busy with Urantia-Book related work that we cannot be expected also to be active in spreading teachings to the culture. While there are students of The Urantia Book who have changed careers and gone to seminary or gotten a Ph.D., other students simply participate in a weekly Bible study group, and others have learned to manifest the light of life at work and at home.

The second caveat is that it is essential in what follows to make a distinction between sharing the book with people and disseminating the teachings. Both types of project are worthy, important, and related, but they are distinct. This is not the moment to review the reasoning about the wise and gradual introduction of the book into planetary culture, especially during our present evolutionary phase. Suffice it to say that in most of what follows I have in mind activities of teaching that do not involve mentioning The Urantia Book itself. We want to do our utmost to help introduce the religion of Jesus into the culture in the very best way possible, not with premature publicity for The Urantia Book, but through the attractive lives of spirit-born mortals. Such mortals, whether or not they know the fifth epochal revelation, reveal the Master to all humankind. When we examine patterns of planetary mortal epochs, we observe that it is not uncommon that multiple revelatory missions are required for the completion of a single age. Much of the mission of the fifth epochal revelation is to restore and update the concepts of the previous epochal revelations.

Suppose, now, that we’d like to focus on spreading teachings related to projects that the authors of The Urantia Book highlight as high-leverage projects for the planet. What are they?

Mortal projects find their cosmic place within the overarching "divine plan of progress: the universal plan for the creation, evolution, ascension, and perfection of will creatures." Our most direct cooperation with the divine plan is to learn to live in ever-increasing harmony with the Thought Adjuster.

But the Gods also have a plan for our planet. There are master seraphim supervising projects in many areas, including nation life, the races, education, health, the home, industry, and diversion. Whoever participates wisely in these realms can hope to align with the gravitational fields established by superhuman activities.

The pivot between individual spiritual realization and planetary transformation is the spiritual renaissance. The authors highlight several high-leverage projects that will have tremendous impact on the planet. They alert us to their strategic importance of these projects by use of such phrases as "the religious challenge of this age," "all Urantia is waiting to hear . . ." and "the great hope of Urantia." These projects include proclaiming the gospel, uniting the professed followers of Jesus, bringing The Urantia Book to the world’s religions, and constructing a new philosophy of living. A better civilization will sometime be built on the teachings of Jesus. "The call to the adventure of building a new and transformed human society by means of the spiritual rebirth of Jesus’ brotherhood of the kingdom should thrill all who believe in him . . . . " Reborn mortals are to reconstruct this world. Said Jesus, "In an age to come the gospel which I declare to you will rule this very world." We each have a role to play in the mosaic of our age.

Conferences should feature the high-leverage projects. There should be groups devoted to them, e-mail discussion lists set up for them, and these groups should have reunions at conferences and make presentations to share their ongoing research and service and to mobilize prayer and teamwork. We have languished in disorganization and sacrificed the power of cooperation. I predict that we would progress better toward our goal of thousands of healthy, stable study groups if we spent less time on activities oriented to other readers and more time on the high-leverage projects indicated in the book itself.

Those who aspire to teach must walk in the clear light of living truth, and those who aspire to walk in the light of truth must walk in the light of science, philosophy, and religion. Jesus observed, "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. 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." Later, among the Syrophoenicians, Jesus taught "the uniformity of the laws of this world and the entire universe," that "the universe is wholly and ever law-abiding and unfailingly dependable." Since the truths of science are part of what modern religion needs in order to balance its moralistic tendencies, it may often be appropriate to season a gospel message with some findings from science.

Today cosmology is a field that generates widespread interest and is starting to make its way into higher education. Cosmology is the main area where a synthesis of science, philosophy, and religion is going on in the culture. Major publishing houses have lists of books in the emerging interdiscipline of science-and-religion. There are new-age lectures that discuss chaos theory and the Gaia hypothesis mixing a shallow understanding of science, a mystical approach to religion, and a lack of careful philosophy. Nevertheless, many new-agers have discovered the joy of daily living in a cosmological sensibility. A majority of them have an openness to new ideas, an ecological ethic, and a sense of spiritual adventure. There is a great opportunity for anyone who will invest the time to enter the conversation.

In this field, many enthusiasts let religion dominate science, as many scholars let science dominate religion. Most physicists use the evidence of an expanding universe as the main clue to the origin of the universe; and they use the second law of thermodynamics as the main clue to the destiny of the universe: the universe will run down to utter disorganization. Truly, "facts never quarrel with real spiritual faith; theories may." Even the common terminology is unfriendly to the concept of a Creator. When order emerges without apparent cause, the phenomenon is dubbed a "self-organizing system." Moreover, since physical cosmology allows no place for the purposive action of intelligent agents, say, in the formation of galaxies, the most sophisticated fantasies of modern mathematics are employed to try to do cosmology without any appeal to creative intelligence. There are, however, many theorists working to preserve some idea akin to divine purpose or design, and they speak in terms of "the anthropic principle" and "fine-tuning." More and more facts are being highlighted which suggest the role of purposive intelligence in creation. The common way to convey this idea is to remark that if some particular physical constant had been slightly different, human life could never have evolved.

I believe that, in order for our cosmological teachings to be effective, we need to manifest in our own lives the joy of cosmological living. As we grow in our realization of orderly causation in the universe, "the fear of existence [is] replaced by the joy of living" (952.0). We need to learn to enjoy facing facts honestly, sensing when a critical and scientific clarification of fact is needed, exploring causation, discerning evolutionary tendencies, and engaging in scientific action based on scientific knowledge. We need to delight in the paradox that we are part of nature while partly transcending nature. We need a vital sense of the Creator’s energy, for which we give thanks at mealtime. Join your local astronomy club. Take your binoculars with you when you get out at night. Let your curiosity and delight grow and become contagious. We have some wonderful friends in this enterprise that have been doing excellent work for decades. Chicago Lutheran theologian Phil Hefner, editor of Zygon magazine, has spread the idea that we are "created co-creators," and there is appeal in the idea that we have an opportunity to contribute in an unfinished, evolving universe. And scientists who are students of the book should do more than explore seeming discrepancies between science and the book. They should teach us what truths of science are needed in the new philosophy of living. They should teach us scientific information that can be publicly used in support of the gospel. For example, there is a need to discover and start cataloguing some of the 50,000 facts that indicate purposive design.

Having touched on cosmology, let me briefly mention social, economic, and political matters. Jesus "frequently [called] attention to the injustice of the unequal distribution of wealth," and he managed to do so without getting entangled in controversies that could distract him from his gospel mission. Before his public career began, he gave discourses on science, philanthropy, philosophy, and world government. Any of these fields could become an area of specialization for an individual or a team. Though Jesus has already shown the way to the realization of spiritual brotherhood, social brotherhood awaits our achieving social fraternity, intellectual cross-fertilization, ethical awakening, political wisdom, as well as spiritual insight. Obviously there are many areas in which special groups of people are ready for selected advanced teachings, and many of us are vocationally involved in areas supervised by the master seraphim, areas where we can impart revealed teachings in a language and manner appropriate to our situation. Workers in the health care field are increasingly prepared to appreciate the contributions of spirituality. In the field of education, the demand is growing wonderfully for service-learning and character education. In economics, a number of theorists realize the importance of the ethical presuppositions of capitalism. In political theory at the national level, where competing theories tend toward one-sidedness and an inadequate sense of history, there is an opportunity to propose the idea that both "conservatives" and "liberals" speak for important values that have their proper sequential realization in the history of a nation. Even during the present rise of nationalism, evolution toward world government continues. A couple years ago, I heard the ambassador from Germany speaking of giving up a portion of German sovereignty to a larger unit. Given the staggering problems of the planet today, our teachings can be effective only if they are imparted in the spirit of teamwork, as we all need to work together for a better world.

In philosophy, the challenge is to integrate science-centered, humanistic, and spiritually oriented approaches. Today the field of philosophy is indeed chaotic, though the worst extremes of mechanistic materialism and cynical skepticism are indeed over, and the nadir of postmodernism has passed. White, male thinkers who affirm universal reason are attacked by spokespersons for feminist and third-world interests. Reductionists, who tell part of the story but not the heart of the story, have gone to remarkable lengths to expose the imperfections of idealistic thinkers, their power interests, how they treated their illegitimate children, and so on. Most philosophy currently being written treats issues from a seemingly neutral standpoint, as though the religious question could be left in the margin. One positive result of the push for political correctness and multiculturalism is that religious philosophy is the rule, not the exception, once you step beyond current western philosophy. New texts are continually appearing which include diverse global perspectives. In addition, the Society of Christian Philosophers has been the fastest growing and largest society in the American Philosophical Association.

There is mysterious advice from a Divine Counselor in the last section of Paper 2. We need a new philosophy of living in order to rehabilitate modern religion. We need to balance the tendency to overemphasize morality by embracing "the truths of science, philosophy, and spiritual experience, . . . the beauties of the physical creation, the charm of intellectual art, and the grandeur of genuine character achievement." This project is not for everyone. "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." Additional guidelines for building the new philosophy include the following. "All truth—material, philosophic, or spiritual—is both beautiful and good. All real beauty—material art or spiritual symmetry—is both true and good. All genuine goodness—whether personal morality, social equity, or divine ministry—is equally true and beautiful. Health, sanity, and happiness are integrations of truth, beauty, and goodness as they are blended in human experience. Such levels of efficient living come about through the unification of energy systems, idea systems, and spirit systems."

Consider the matrix of categories that may be constructed on the basis of these indications.