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.
My Urantia Book Index 