The Eternal Quest

What a beautiful calling the Papers lay before us:

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. (42.3) 2:7.10

It’s no meager challenge, and many have missed unifying all aspects of reality, among them various philosophers and religious groups.

Philosophers commit their gravest error when they are misled into the fallacy of abstraction, the practice of focusing the attention upon one aspect of reality and then of pronouncing such an isolated aspect to be the whole truth.  (42.6) 2:7.5

The great mistake of the Hebrew religion was its failure to associate the goodness of God with the factual truths of science and the appealing beauty of art. As civilization progressed, and since religion continued to pursue the same unwise course of overemphasizing the goodness of God to the relative exclusion of truth and neglect of beauty, there developed an increasing tendency for certain types of men to turn away from the abstract and dissociated concept of isolated goodness. (43.2) 2:7.9

Who knows if modern religion today will turn a corner and begin to integrate truth and beauty into its teaching. But thankfully we don’t have to wait. By developing our own integrated, artful philosophy of living, we demonstrate to others the harmony of unity possible through our experience. And this righteousness will ring true to them, just as it will ring even to the Ear of the Infinite.

Philosophic assault of the Atonement Doctrine

The Atonement Doctrine never made sense to me.

In the eyes of the most just, merciful and loving personality ever, how could all humanity be held guilty of a crime they did not commit? Especially when the proof of their innocence was incontrovertible?

It may have made sense to the minds that thought it up, but today such a proposal would not stand up even in our flawed and imperfect courts. Yet it remains as the bedrock for modern Christian thought.

Here and there the Papers comment on the atonement doctrine, and when they do, they always highlight its errors. Here’s one from Paper 2, Section 6, The Goodness of God:

 The erroneous supposition that the righteousness of God was irreconcilable with the selfless love of the heavenly Father, presupposed absence of unity in the nature of Deity and led directly to the elaboration of the atonement doctrine, which is a philosophic assault upon both the unity and the free-willness of God.  (41.3) 2:6.5

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. (41.3) 2:6.6

No experience is ever lost

Even in personalities who choose evil, then sin, then iniquity, and ultimately turn away all mercy and finally choose again the Father’s will, their experiences of survival value are still preserved. They still contribute to the universe evolving toward light and life, despite their rejection of divine truth and reality. Their valuable experience contributes to the Supreme Being, and if an Adjuster is present, they too keep the experience of sojourning with the lost soul.

Just one more example of the perfection of Divinity in their planning of all universal development. I stand in awe how He captures experiential value even from those who choose unreality.

When the continued embrace of sin by the associated mind culminates in complete self-identification with iniquity, then upon the cessation of life, upon cosmic dissolution, such an isolated personality is absorbed into the oversoul of creation, becoming a part of the evolving experience of the Supreme Being. Never again does it appear as a personality; its identity becomes as though it had never been. In the case of an Adjuster-indwelt personality, the experiential spirit values survive in the reality of the continuing Adjuster. (37.2) 2:3.4

Eternity explained in terms of Time

There are so many concepts presented in the UB that I simply cannot truly grasp, Eternity being one. Even the author of Paper 2, a Divine Counselor, admits as much:

 In all our efforts to enlarge and spiritualize the human concept of God, we are tremendously handicapped by the limited capacity of the mortal mind … All our efforts to enlarge the human concept of God would be well-nigh futile except for the fact that the mortal mind is indwelt by the bestowed Adjuster of the Universal Father and is pervaded by the Truth Spirit of the Creator Son.   ^(33.3)2:0.3

However, he/she the author still endeavors to explain to us time-limited mortals how the Universal Father lives in eternity, and he drops a couple hints along the way:

… he inhabits the circle of eternity … To God there is no past, present, or future; all time is present at any given moment. ^(34.4)2:1.5

That’s interesting, for a long time I’ve envisioned it this way, that to God “all time is present at any given moment”. It’s like He can look at any moment in time whenever he wants to, or more accurately, He can look at ALL moments of time whenever he wants to.

Not being bound by space or limited by time, he can view all of time at once, which he does at every moment. And since his mind is omnipotent, simultaneously viewing and comprehending all events that ever have, or ever will occur  is no problem.

Whew! Calgon, take me away.