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Freewill is God’s will. Each and every personality has been given freewill by Deity. Freewill is inherent in personality. It’s a package deal. Personality, mind, freewill.
I hope here to begin a study of freewill and its implications related to experiential wisdom, personal spiritization, and destiny progress. We should consider its range of effects on ourselves and on others, and its limits, and the relationship between personal will and God’s will.
What is God’s will?? Is it knowable? Is it doable? How do we know if we are following it?
What is true and false liberty?
Big topic. So many questions. So much text to consider.
Please join in as you wish. Comments, discussion, questions are welcome. I have so many questions myself…
5:6.8 (71.3) Having thus provided for the growth of the immortal soul and having liberated man’s inner self from the fetters of absolute dependence on antecedent causation, the Father stands aside. Now, man having thus been liberated from the fetters of causation response, at least as pertains to eternal destiny, and provision having been made for the growth of the immortal self, the soul, it remains for man himself to will the creation or to inhibit the creation of this surviving and eternal self which is his for the choosing. No other being, force, creator, or agency in all the wide universe of universes can interfere to any degree with the absolute sovereignty of the mortal free will, as it operates within the realms of choice, regarding the eternal destiny of the personality of the choosing mortal. As pertains to eternal survival, God has decreed the sovereignty of the material and mortal will, and that decree is absolute.
5:6.9 (71.4) The bestowal of creature personality confers relative liberation from slavish response to antecedent causation, and the personalities of all such moral beings, evolutionary or otherwise, are centered in the personality of the Universal Father. They are ever drawn towards his Paradise presence by that kinship of being which constitutes the vast and universal family circle and fraternal circuit of the eternal God. There is a kinship of divine spontaneity in all personality.
111:5.1 (1221.2) The doing of the will of God is nothing more or less than an exhibition of creature willingness to share the inner life with God—with the very God who has made such a creature life of inner meaning-value possible. Sharing is Godlike—divine. God shares all with the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit, while they, in turn, share all things with the divine Sons and spirit Daughters of the universes.
111:5.2 (1221.3) The imitation of God is the key to perfection; the doing of his will is the secret of survival and of perfection in survival.
111:5.3 (1221.4) Mortals live in God, and so God has willed to live in mortals. As men trust themselves to him, so has he—and first—trusted a part of himself to be with men; has consented to live in men and to indwell men subject to the human will.
111:5.4 (1221.5) Peace in this life, survival in death, perfection in the next life, service in eternity—all these are achieved (in spirit) now when the creature personality consents—chooses—to subject the creature will to the Father’s will. And already has the Father chosen to make a fragment of himself subject to the will of the creature personality.
111:5.5 (1221.6) Such a creature choice is not a surrender of will. It is a consecration of will, an expansion of will, a glorification of will, a perfecting of will; and such choosing raises the creature will from the level of temporal significance to that higher estate wherein the personality of the creature son communes with the personality of the spirit Father.
111:5.6 (1221.7) This choosing of the Father’s will is the spiritual finding of the spirit Father by mortal man, even though an age must pass before the creature son may actually stand in the factual presence of God on Paradise. This choosing does not so much consist in the negation of creature will—“Not my will but yours be done”—as it consists in the creature’s positive affirmation: “It is my will that your will be done.” And if this choice is made, sooner or later will the God-choosing son find inner union (fusion) with the indwelling God fragment, while this same perfecting son will find supreme personality satisfaction in the worship communion of the personality of man and the personality of his Maker, two personalities whose creative attributes have eternally joined in self-willed mutuality of expression—the birth of another eternal partnership of the will of man and the will of God.
So…we begin.
God does not demand obedience or conformity. Nor does God coerce or convince or manipulate or trick any being into compliance with God’s will or way. God does not punish any mortal’s choices (although bad choices and bad motivation does result in suffering repercussions, such consequences are not personally imposed or arbitrary, but rather, are inherent due to the lack of wisdom involved and the amount of selfishness in the choice made).
Decisions, choices, motives, intentions, and priorities determine repercussions first. Tactics, strategies, and timing reflect experience and wisdom next. All of those effect actual outcomes. But outcomes are also affected by the interactive environment of all other freewill choices and actions too. We cannot truly predict or manage outcomes due to so many variables not in our control.
1. The Mind Arena of Choice
111:1.1 (1216.2) Though the work of Adjusters is spiritual in nature, they must, perforce, do all their work upon an intellectual foundation. Mind is the human soil from which the spirit Monitor must evolve the morontia soul with the co-operation of the indwelt personality.
111:1.2 (1216.3) There is a cosmic unity in the several mind levels of the universe of universes. Intellectual selves have their origin in the cosmic mind much as nebulae take origin in the cosmic energies of universe space. On the human (hence personal) level of intellectual selves the potential of spirit evolution becomes dominant, with the assent of the mortal mind, because of the spiritual endowments of the human personality together with the creative presence of an entity-point of absolute value in such human selves. But such a spirit dominance of the material mind is conditioned upon two experiences: This mind must have evolved up through the ministry of the seven adjutant mind-spirits, and the material (personal) self must choose to co-operate with the indwelling Adjuster in creating and fostering the morontia self, the evolutionary and potentially immortal soul.
111:1.3 (1216.4) Material mind is the arena in which human personalities live, are self-conscious, make decisions, choose God or forsake him, eternalize or destroy themselves.
111:1.4 (1216.5) Material evolution has provided you a life machine, your body; the Father himself has endowed you with the purest spirit reality known in the universe, your Thought Adjuster. But into your hands, subject to your own decisions, has been given mind, and it is by mind that you live or die. It is within this mind and with this mind that you make those moral decisions which enable you to achieve Adjusterlikeness, and that is Godlikeness.
111:1.5 (1216.6) Mortal mind is a temporary intellect system loaned to human beings for use during a material lifetime, and as they use this mind, they are either accepting or rejecting the potential of eternal existence. Mind is about all you have of universe reality that is subject to your will, and the soul—the morontia self—will faithfully portray the harvest of the temporal decisions which the mortal self is making. Human consciousness rests gently upon the electrochemical mechanism below and delicately touches the spirit-morontia energy system above. Of neither of these two systems is the human being ever completely conscious in his mortal life; therefore must he work in mind, of which he is conscious. And it is not so much what mind comprehends as what mind desires to comprehend that insures survival; it is not so much what mind is like as what mind is striving to be like that constitutes spirit identification. It is not so much that man is conscious of God as that man yearns for God that results in universe ascension. What you are today is not so important as what you are becoming day by day and in eternity.
111:1.6 (1217.1) Mind is the cosmic instrument on which the human will can play the discords of destruction, or upon which this same human will can bring forth the exquisite melodies of God identification and consequent eternal survival. The Adjuster bestowed upon man is, in the last analysis, impervious to evil and incapable of sin, but mortal mind can actually be twisted, distorted, and rendered evil and ugly by the sinful machinations of a perverse and self-seeking human will. Likewise can this mind be made noble, beautiful, true, and good—actually great—in accordance with the spirit-illuminated will of a God-knowing human being.
111:1.7 (1217.2) Evolutionary mind is only fully stable and dependable when manifesting itself upon the two extremes of cosmic intellectuality—the wholly mechanized and the entirely spiritualized. Between the intellectual extremes of pure mechanical control and true spirit nature there intervenes that enormous group of evolving and ascending minds whose stability and tranquillity are dependent upon personality choice and spirit identification.
111:1.8 (1217.3) But man does not passively, slavishly, surrender his will to the Adjuster. Rather does he actively, positively, and co-operatively choose to follow the Adjuster’s leading when and as such leading consciously differs from the desires and impulses of the natural mortal mind. The Adjusters manipulate but never dominate man’s mind against his will; to the Adjusters the human will is supreme. And they so regard and respect it while they strive to achieve the spiritual goals of thought adjustment and character transformation in the almost limitless arena of the evolving human intellect.
111:1.9 (1217.4) Mind is your ship, the Adjuster is your pilot, the human will is captain. The master of the mortal vessel should have the wisdom to trust the divine pilot to guide the ascending soul into the morontia harbors of eternal survival. Only by selfishness, slothfulness, and sinfulness can the will of man reject the guidance of such a loving pilot and eventually wreck the mortal career upon the evil shoals of rejected mercy and upon the rocks of embraced sin. With your consent, this faithful pilot will safely carry you across the barriers of time and the handicaps of space to the very source of the divine mind and on beyond, even to the Paradise Father of Adjusters.
“Freewill”:
https://urantia-association.org/search/?zoom_sort=2&zoom_query=Freewill+&x=4&y=11
“Will of God”:
https://urantia-association.org/search/?zoom_sort=2&zoom_query=%22Will+of+God%22&x=6&y=16
“Choice”:
https://urantia-association.org/search/?zoom_sort=2&zoom_query=+Choice&x=3&y=14
God’s will. What does that mean? What is God’s will? Is it the same or different for each of us? Is it always the same in all situations or does it depend on circumstances??
Please remember that anything written here that is not UB text posted is merely tadpole opinion and perspective. Meanings discovered in fact and truth are reflective of one’s personal experience and wisdom and growth progress, so understanding and opinions should grow over time according to our changing perspective of universe reality.
I don’t think there is a specific situational “what” regarding God’s will. I believe the “what” we choose depends entirely upon our experiential wisdom.
But I do believe the UB teaches us that purity of heart, or motives and intentions, is the one element that is universal and persistent and consistent to God’s will. It is the “why”, rather than the “what”, of each freewill choice and decision that measures if our will is in alignment with God’s will.
The “what” is always an expression of experiential wisdom and relies upon strategies, tactics, and timing. The “why” is the foundational cause and source of motives, intentions, and priorities – but our motivation is not necessarily reflective of wisdom. We will never be as experienced or as wise as God…or Michael. Wisdom is learned.
A pure heart however is something everyone can aspire to… and achieve. Even children and us tadpoles can purify our motivation and heart and intentions and perspective and priorities by faith and trust and the transformative powers of the Spirit within. Our freewill can thusly be God oriented and guided so that our will is God’s will, even though the “what” we choose may not reflect God’s way or “what” God would do.
God created and the universe depends on the fact and function of personal and unique experiences and expressions of experience. God does not demand or desire uniformity of choices. But God does hope we come to respond to love, truth, beauty, and goodness, and be motivated by those.
28:6.18 (316.5) The universal economy is based on intake and output; throughout the eternal career you will never encounter monotony of inaction or stagnation of personality. Progress is made possible by inherent motion, advancement grows out of the divine capacity for action, and achievement is the child of imaginative adventure. But inherent in this capacity for achievement is the responsibility of ethics, the necessity for recognizing that the world and the universe are filled with a multitude of differing types of beings. All of this magnificent creation, including yourself, was not made just for you. This is not an egocentric universe. The Gods have decreed, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” and said your Master Son, “He who would be greatest among you let him be server of all.”
28:6.19 (316.6) The real nature of any service, be it rendered by man or angel, is fully revealed in the faces of these secoraphic service indicators, the Sanctities of Service. The full analysis of the true and of the hidden motives is clearly shown. These angels are indeed the mind readers, heart searchers, and soul revealers of the universe. Mortals may employ words to conceal their thoughts, but these high seconaphim lay bare the deep motives of the human heart and of the angelic mind.
Do we expect and demand our own children choose and do precisely “what” we would do at their youthful and inexperienced intersections of decision?? Or to choose with the loyalties and the honor they were taught?
Do the right thing is a useless slogan, but do everything for the right reason is guidance even the youngest and least experienced child can do.
In the hierchy of choice, there are but 4 options:
1. Do the right thing for the right reason.
2. Do the wrong thing, but for the right reason.
3. Do the right thing, but for the wrong reason.
4. Do the wrong thing for the wrong reason.
#2 is simply the strategic, tactical, or timing errors of inexperience. #3 is described by the Master as public posturing for selfish motives… praying in public, public generosity, etc.
103:4.4 (1133.4) Jesus swept away all of the ceremonials of sacrifice and atonement. He destroyed the basis of all this fictitious guilt and sense of isolation in the universe by declaring that man is a child of God; the creature-Creator relationship was placed on a child-parent basis. God becomes a loving Father to his mortal sons and daughters. All ceremonials not a legitimate part of such an intimate family relationship are forever abrogated.
103:4.5 (1133.5) God the Father deals with man his child on the basis, not of actual virtue or worthiness, but in recognition of the child’s motivation—the creature purpose and intent. The relationship is one of parent-child association and is actuated by divine love.
“Motives”:
https://urantia-association.org/search/?zoom_sort=2&zoom_query=Motives&x=2&y=17
“Motivation”:
https://urantia-association.org/search/?zoom_sort=2&zoom_query=Motivation+&x=2&y=19
12:7.7 (138.2) The will of God does not uniformly prevail in the heart of the God-seeking material mortal, but if the time frame is enlarged beyond the moment to embrace the whole of the first life, then does God’s will become increasingly discernible in the spirit fruits which are borne in the lives of the spirit-led children of God. And then, if human life is further enlarged to include the morontia experience, the divine will is observed to shine brighter and brighter in the spiritualizing acts of those creatures of time who have begun to taste the Divine delights of experiencing the relationship of the personality of man with the personality of the Universal Father.
94:3.5 (1030.5) The karma principle of causality continuity is, again, very close to the truth of the repercussional synthesis of all time-space actions in the Deity presence of the Supreme; but this postulate never provided for the co-ordinate personal attainment of Deity by the individual religionist, only for the ultimate engulfment of all personality by the Universal Oversoul.
There is personal, proximity, and social karma to consider.
“Consequences”:
https://urantia-association.org/search/?zoom_sort=2&zoom_query=Consequences+&x=11&y=8
“Repurcussions”:
111:5.1 (1221.2) The doing of the will of God is nothing more or less than an exhibition of creature willingness to share the inner life with God—with the very God who has made such a creature life of inner meaning-value possible. Sharing is Godlike—divine. God shares all with the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit, while they, in turn, share all things with the divine Sons and spirit Daughters of the universes.
Me here:
The “exhibition of creature willingness to share the inner life with God…”
Sharing the inner life with the affectionate origin, source, and destiny of the inner life. Being with Dad and Mom. Sharing our Being and our Becoming with the family of creation.
The will of God is “nothing more or less than” that. The Master said that if we seek God first, then everything else with meaning and value will come to us. We are also taught we receive love and forgiveness to that degree we give love and forgiveness to others. The flow of love from the Divine Connection cannot be greater than the love we give others. In-flow equals outflow. Or outflow allows for the inflow available for the outflow.
This equation of the law-of-capacity is self regulating and responsive with each personality in all creation. It is not a judgement and is not imposed personally but is a universal reality relationship ratio that defines and determines our capacity to receive limited only by our willingness to share.
Knowledge and wisdom are functions of experience and learning, but not so for the pure heart and motivation of love which requires only our “willingness”. Consider the eagerness of a child’s love and willingness to share it with others…especially Mom and Dad!!
1:4.5 (26.7) The divine mystery consists in the inherent difference which exists between the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal, the time-space creature and the Universal Creator, the material and the spiritual, the imperfection of man and the perfection of Paradise Deity. The God of universal love unfailingly manifests himself to every one of his creatures up to the fullness of that creature’s capacity to spiritually grasp the qualities of divine truth, beauty, and goodness.
1:4.6 (27.1) To every spirit being and to every mortal creature in every sphere and on every world of the universe of universes, the Universal Father reveals all of his gracious and divine self that can be discerned or comprehended by such spirit beings and by such mortal creatures. God is no respecter of persons, either spiritual or material. The divine presence which any child of the universe enjoys at any given moment is limited only by the capacity of such a creature to receive and to discern the spirit actualities of the supermaterial world.
As shown, and well known by all here, freewill choices have repercussions. Not just personal repercussions. Our choices have outward effects upon others and ripple effects over time.
The UB teaches that the intentions and motivation of our decisions affects our being and define our character. Who we are, and become, directly reflects the heart of the one who chooses. Our motivation and heart determines every decision we make. Do we choose domination over another (others) or self importance and me first, or self indulgence, or seek advantages for ourselves at the disadvantage of others?
Or are our choices determined by caring and sharing, or fairness, or loyalty and duty, or ideals and hopes, or kindness and patience? Those motives for our choices determines the karmic outcome and both the personal and the social outcomes of freewill choices.
What we choose also affects others in good ways and in bad ways. Are we aware of that? Do we consider this? Or are we indifferent to the effect of our choices on others? This is not about seeking attention or approval (another form of self centered motivation) but about whether we identify and respond to the universe reality of relationship in the family of creation.
Even the secular politics of Libertarianism and the Golden Rule recognize the social and self interest in our relationships with others, even all others.
There is no way to have personal freewill without the repercussions of freewill choices. We learn by trial and error. Actually by the suffering caused by error. Our own and that of others. Our existence is thusly effected, to some degree or another, by the errors of others and the repercussions of the choices of others.
Consequences come in a full spectrum of form, flavor, and outcome. The more righteous our intentions, the better the outcomes and repercussions. The more wisdom demonstrated by our tactics, strategies, and timing, also the better the outcomes and repercussions. Both affect outcomes – righteousness AND wisdom. Two different causes of effects. Related in some ways but not the same and with different effects. A pure heart will lead, eventually, to and result in wisdom, but a pure heart is not the same as experiential wisdom. There are also consequences to a lack of wisdom no matter how pure the heart. This makes the outcome-calculus a complex equation, according to the Papers.
And no matter our own pure heart and/or wisdom – the freewill choices of those in our family, our tribe and community, our nation, our world, and by our celestial friends and rulers also affect our experience and may cause suffering too!! The chain reaction of repercussions by ALL personalities does, in some ways, affects others based on our proximity to those personal repercussions caused by the freewill choices of others!! Our choices affect others. The choices of others affect us. This is the way freewill works.
Error in motive or wisdom causes suffering. Now, there are greater and lesser consequences to every choice made by everybody. And then there is the proximity-effect zone or dimension. Some personalities have much smaller and others have much larger effect-zones based on social position and power. Parents compared to children. Leaders over followers. Owners over employees. Politicians and administrators, etc.
54:6.3 (618.6) If an affectionate father of a large family chooses to show mercy to one of his children guilty of grievous wrongdoing, it may well be that the extension of mercy to this misbehaving child will work a temporary hardship upon all the other and well-behaved children. Such eventualities are inevitable; such a risk is inseparable from the reality situation of having a loving parent and of being a member of a family group. Each member of a family profits by the righteous conduct of every other member; likewise must each member suffer the immediate time-consequences of the misconduct of every other member. Families, groups, nations, races, worlds, systems, constellations, and universes are relationships of association which possess individuality; and therefore does every member of any such group, large or small, reap the benefits and suffer the consequences of the rightdoing and the wrongdoing of all other members of the group concerned.
54:6.4 (619.1) But one thing should be made clear: If you are made to suffer the evil consequences of the sin of some member of your family, some fellow citizen or fellow mortal, even rebellion in the system or elsewhere—no matter what you may have to endure because of the wrongdoing of your associates, fellows, or superiors—you may rest secure in the eternal assurance that such tribulations are transient afflictions. None of these fraternal consequences of misbehavior in the group can ever jeopardize your eternal prospects or in the least degree deprive you of your divine right of Paradise ascension and God attainment.
13:4.4 (150.3) Physical authority, presence, and function are unvarying in all the universes, small or great. The differing factor in spiritual presence, or reaction, is the fluctuating differential in its recognition and reception by will creatures. Whereas the spiritual presence of absolute and existential Deity is in no manner whatever influenced by attitudes of loyalty or disloyalty on the part of created beings, at the same time it is true that the functioning presence of subabsolute and experiential Deity is definitely and directly influenced by the decisions, choices, and will-attitudes of such finite creature beings—by the loyalty and devotion of the individual being, planet, system, constellation, or universe. But this spiritual presence of divinity is not whimsical nor arbitrary; its experiential variance is inherent in the freewill endowment of personal creatures.
13:4.5 (150.4) The determiner of the differential of spiritual presence exists in your own hearts and minds and consists in the manner of your own choosing, in the decisions of your minds, and in the determination of your own wills. This differential is inherent in the freewill reactions of intelligent personal beings, beings whom the Universal Father has ordained shall exercise this liberty of choosing. And the Deities are ever true to the ebb and flow of their spirits in meeting and satisfying the conditions and demands of this differential of creature choice, now bestowing more of their presence in response to a sincere desire for the same and again withdrawing themselves from the scene as their creatures decide adversely in the exercise of their divinely bestowed freedom of choice. And thus does the spirit of divinity become humbly obedient to the choosing of the creatures of the realms.
“Decisions”:
https://urantia-association.org/search/?zoom_sort=2&zoom_query=Decisions+&x=3&y=6
39:4.10 (435.3) 4. Quickeners of Morality. On the mansion worlds you begin to learn self-government for the benefit of all concerned. Your mind learns co-operation, learns how to plan with other and wiser beings. On the system headquarters the seraphic teachers will further quicken your appreciation of cosmic morality—of the interactions of liberty and loyalty.
39:4.11 (435.4) What is loyalty? It is the fruit of an intelligent appreciation of universe brotherhood; one could not take so much and give nothing. As you ascend the personality scale, first you learn to be loyal, then to love, then to be filial, and then may you be free; but not until you are a finaliter, not until you have attained perfection of loyalty, can you self-realize finality of liberty.
39:4.12 (435.5) These seraphim teach the fruitfulness of patience: That stagnation is certain death, but that overrapid growth is equally suicidal; that as a drop of water from a higher level falls to a lower and, flowing onward, passes ever downward through a succession of short falls, so ever upward is progress in the morontia and spirit worlds—and just as slowly and by just such gradual stages.
39:4.13 (435.6) To the inhabited worlds the quickeners of morality portray mortal life as an unbroken chain of many links. Your short sojourn on Urantia, on this sphere of mortal infancy, is only a single link, the very first in the long chain that is to stretch across universes and through the eternal ages. It is not so much what you learn in this first life; it is the experience of living this life that is important. Even the work of this world, paramount though it is, is not nearly so important as the way in which you do this work. There is no material reward for righteous living, but there is profound satisfaction—consciousness of achievement—and this transcends any conceivable material reward.
39:4.14 (435.7) The keys of the kingdom of heaven are: sincerity, more sincerity, and more sincerity. All men have these keys. Men use them—advance in spirit status—by decisions, by more decisions, and by more decisions. The highest moral choice is the choice of the highest possible value, and always—in any sphere, in all of them—this is to choose to do the will of God. If man thus chooses, he is great, though he be the humblest citizen of Jerusem or even the least of mortals on Urantia.
Me here: I believe our personal “highest moral choice” varies and depends on our individual experiential wisdom and spiritualization progress. A pure heart does not necessarily or automatically deliver great wisdom regarding strategies, tactics, techniques, and timing!
But the act is ours and the consequences or results are God’s! May we act with a pure heart! Wisdom comes thereby and therefrom!
God created time and space for the evolutionary and experiential expression of freewill perfecting and reality alignment by the children of time. While our reality alignment is voluntary and subject to the errors of inexperience and immaturity, we are directly connected to the persons and ministry of Deity and universe reality and the force of love and morality, as defined by truth, beauty, and goodness.
We are wired to recognize and respond to universe realities and the Deity connection and Deity Gravity Circuits. The more we respond, the more we experience religious growth and personal progress – or the perfecting of will and wisdom by experience. The more real we become the more relevant and the greater our contribution to the universal economy and God the Supreme.
God has designed universe reality to be experienced by unique personalities but also for that experience to be uniquely expressed by those individuals. Our freewill is the intentional and purposeful technique of such individualized and personalized experience, progress, and the expression of both. This is why our personal freewill is not supposed to be the same from person to person. Freewill is to personalize the experience of reality and our expression of that experience. We are not robots or automatons and our uniqueness is the Will of God!!
101:6.3 (1111.7) Moral will embraces decisions based on reasoned knowledge, augmented by wisdom, and sanctioned by religious faith. Such choices are acts of moral nature and evidence the existence of moral personality, the forerunner of morontia personality and eventually of true spirit status.
101:6.4 (1111.8) The evolutionary type of knowledge is but the accumulation of protoplasmic memory material; this is the most primitive form of creature consciousness. Wisdom embraces the ideas formulated from protoplasmic memory in process of association and recombination, and such phenomena differentiate human mind from mere animal mind. Animals have knowledge, but only man possesses wisdom capacity. Truth is made accessible to the wisdom-endowed individual by the bestowal on such a mind of the spirits of the Father and the Sons, the Thought Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth.
2. Good and Evil
132:2.1 (1457.4) Mardus was the acknowledged leader of the Cynics of Rome, and he became a great friend of the scribe of Damascus. Day after day he conversed with Jesus, and night upon night he listened to his supernal teaching. Among the more important discussions with Mardus was the one designed to answer this sincere Cynic’s question about good and evil. In substance, and in twentieth-century phraseology, Jesus said:
132:2.2 (1457.5) My brother, good and evil are merely words symbolizing relative levels of human comprehension of the observable universe. If you are ethically lazy and socially indifferent, you can take as your standard of good the current social usages. If you are spiritually indolent and morally unprogressive, you may take as your standards of good the religious practices and traditions of your contemporaries. But the soul that survives time and emerges into eternity must make a living and personal choice between good and evil as they are determined by the true values of the spiritual standards established by the divine spirit which the Father in heaven has sent to dwell within the heart of man. This indwelling spirit is the standard of personality survival.
132:2.3 (1457.6) Goodness, like truth, is always relative and unfailingly evil-contrasted. It is the perception of these qualities of goodness and truth that enables the evolving souls of men to make those personal decisions of choice which are essential to eternal survival.
132:2.4 (1458.1) The spiritually blind individual who logically follows scientific dictation, social usage, and religious dogma stands in grave danger of sacrificing his moral freedom and losing his spiritual liberty. Such a soul is destined to become an intellectual parrot, a social automaton, and a slave to religious authority.
132:2.5 (1458.2) Goodness is always growing toward new levels of the increasing liberty of moral self-realization and spiritual personality attainment—the discovery of, and identification with, the indwelling Adjuster. An experience is good when it heightens the appreciation of beauty, augments the moral will, enhances the discernment of truth, enlarges the capacity to love and serve one’s fellows, exalts the spiritual ideals, and unifies the supreme human motives of time with the eternal plans of the indwelling Adjuster, all of which lead directly to an increased desire to do the Father’s will, thereby fostering the divine passion to find God and to be more like him.
132:2.6 (1458.3) As you ascend the universe scale of creature development, you will find increasing goodness and diminishing evil in perfect accordance with your capacity for goodness-experience and truth-discernment. The ability to entertain error or experience evil will not be fully lost until the ascending human soul achieves final spirit levels.
132:2.7 (1458.4) Goodness is living, relative, always progressing, invariably a personal experience, and everlastingly correlated with the discernment of truth and beauty. Goodness is found in the recognition of the positive truth-values of the spiritual level, which must, in human experience, be contrasted with the negative counterpart—the shadows of potential evil.
132:2.8 (1458.5) Until you attain Paradise levels, goodness will always be more of a quest than a possession, more of a goal than an experience of attainment. But even as you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you experience increasing satisfaction in the partial attainment of goodness. The presence of goodness and evil in the world is in itself positive proof of the existence and reality of man’s moral will, the personality, which thus identifies these values and is also able to choose between them.
132:2.9 (1458.6) By the time of the attainment of Paradise the ascending mortal’s capacity for identifying the self with true spirit values has become so enlarged as to result in the attainment of the perfection of the possession of the light of life. Such a perfected spirit personality becomes so wholly, divinely, and spiritually unified with the positive and supreme qualities of goodness, beauty, and truth that there remains no possibility that such a righteous spirit would cast any negative shadow of potential evil when exposed to the searching luminosity of the divine light of the infinite Rulers of Paradise. In all such spirit personalities, goodness is no longer partial, contrastive, and comparative; it has become divinely complete and spiritually replete; it approaches the purity and perfection of the Supreme.
132:2.10 (1458.7) The possibility of evil is necessary to moral choosing, but not the actuality thereof. A shadow is only relatively real. Actual evil is not necessary as a personal experience. Potential evil acts equally well as a decision stimulus in the realms of moral progress on the lower levels of spiritual development. Evil becomes a reality of personal experience only when a moral mind makes evil its choice.
7. Morals, Virtue, and Personality
16:7.1 (192. Intelligence alone cannot explain the moral nature. Morality, virtue, is indigenous to human personality. Moral intuition, the realization of duty, is a component of human mind endowment and is associated with the other inalienables of human nature: scientific curiosity and spiritual insight. Man’s mentality far transcends that of his animal cousins, but it is his moral and religious natures that especially distinguish him from the animal world.
16:7.2 (193.1) The selective response of an animal is limited to the motor level of behavior. The supposed insight of the higher animals is on a motor level and usually appears only after the experience of motor trial and error. Man is able to exercise scientific, moral, and spiritual insight prior to all exploration or experimentation.
16:7.3 (193.2) Only a personality can know what it is doing before it does it; only personalities possess insight in advance of experience. A personality can look before it leaps and can therefore learn from looking as well as from leaping. A nonpersonal animal ordinarily learns only by leaping.
16:7.4 (193.3) As a result of experience an animal becomes able to examine the different ways of attaining a goal and to select an approach based on accumulated experience. But a personality can also examine the goal itself and pass judgment on its worth-whileness, its value. Intelligence alone can discriminate as to the best means of attaining indiscriminate ends, but a moral being possesses an insight which enables him to discriminate between ends as well as between means. And a moral being in choosing virtue is nonetheless intelligent. He knows what he is doing, why he is doing it, where he is going, and how he will get there.
16:7.5 (193.4) When man fails to discriminate the ends of his mortal striving, he finds himself functioning on the animal level of existence. He has failed to avail himself of the superior advantages of that material acumen, moral discrimination, and spiritual insight which are an integral part of his cosmic-mind endowment as a personal being.
16:7.6 (193.5) Virtue is righteousness—conformity with the cosmos. To name virtues is not to define them, but to live them is to know them. Virtue is not mere knowledge nor yet wisdom but rather the reality of progressive experience in the attainment of ascending levels of cosmic achievement. In the day-by-day life of mortal man, virtue is realized by the consistent choosing of good rather than evil, and such choosing ability is evidence of the possession of a moral nature.
16:7.7 (193.6) Man’s choosing between good and evil is influenced, not only by the keenness of his moral nature, but also by such influences as ignorance, immaturity, and delusion. A sense of proportion is also concerned in the exercise of virtue because evil may be perpetrated when the lesser is chosen in the place of the greater as a result of distortion or deception. The art of relative estimation or comparative measurement enters into the practice of the virtues of the moral realm.
16:7.8 (193.7) Man’s moral nature would be impotent without the art of measurement, the discrimination embodied in his ability to scrutinize meanings. Likewise would moral choosing be futile without that cosmic insight which yields the consciousness of spiritual values. From the standpoint of intelligence, man ascends to the level of a moral being because he is endowed with personality.
16:7.9 (193. Morality can never be advanced by law or by force. It is a personal and freewill matter and must be disseminated by the contagion of the contact of morally fragrant persons with those who are less morally responsive, but who are also in some measure desirous of doing the Father’s will.
16:7.10 (193.9) Moral acts are those human performances which are characterized by the highest intelligence, directed by selective discrimination in the choice of superior ends as well as in the selection of moral means to attain these ends. Such conduct is virtuous. Supreme virtue, then, is wholeheartedly to choose to do the will of the Father in heaven.
Me here: We are taught that the ends can never justify the means. And further, that the motivation of our means always justify the ends.
556.13) 48:7.13 11. The weak indulge in resolutions, but the strong act. Life is but a day’s work — do it well. The act is ours; the consequences God’s.
8. Urantia Personality
16:8.1 (194.1) The Universal Father bestows personality upon numerous orders of beings as they function on diverse levels of universe actuality. Urantia human beings are endowed with personality of the finite-mortal type, functioning on the level of the ascending sons of God.
16:8.2 (194.2) Though we can hardly undertake to define personality, we may attempt to narrate our understanding of the known factors which go to make up the ensemble of material, mental, and spiritual energies whose interassociation constitutes the mechanism wherein and whereon and wherewith the Universal Father causes his bestowed personality to function.
16:8.3 (194.3) Personality is a unique endowment of original nature whose existence is independent of, and antecedent to, the bestowal of the Thought Adjuster. Nevertheless, the presence of the Adjuster does augment the qualitative manifestation of personality. Thought Adjusters, when they come forth from the Father, are identical in nature, but personality is diverse, original, and exclusive; and the manifestation of personality is further conditioned and qualified by the nature and qualities of the associated energies of a material, mindal, and spiritual nature which constitute the organismal vehicle for personality manifestation.
16:8.4 (194.4) Personalities may be similar, but they are never the same. Persons of a given series, type, order, or pattern may and do resemble one another, but they are never identical. Personality is that feature of an individual which we know, and which enables us to identify such a being at some future time regardless of the nature and extent of changes in form, mind, or spirit status. Personality is that part of any individual which enables us to recognize and positively identify that person as the one we have previously known, no matter how much he may have changed because of the modification of the vehicle of expression and manifestation of his personality.
16:8.5 (194.5) Creature personality is distinguished by two self-manifesting and characteristic phenomena of mortal reactive behavior: self-consciousness and associated relative free will.
16:8.6 (194.6) Self-consciousness consists in intellectual awareness of personality actuality; it includes the ability to recognize the reality of other personalities. It indicates capacity for individualized experience in and with cosmic realities, equivalating to the attainment of identity status in the personality relationships of the universe. Self-consciousness connotes recognition of the actuality of mind ministration and the realization of relative independence of creative and determinative free will.
16:8.7 (194.7) The relative free will which characterizes the self-consciousness of human personality is involved in:
16:8.8 (194.8) 1. Moral decision, highest wisdom.
16:8.9 (194.9) 2. Spiritual choice, truth discernment.
16:8.10 (194.10) 3. Unselfish love, brotherhood service.
16:8.11 (194.11) 4. Purposeful co-operation, group loyalty.
16:8.12 (194.12) 5. Cosmic insight, the grasp of universe meanings.
16:8.13 (194.13) 6. Personality dedication, wholehearted devotion to doing the Father’s will.
16:8.14 (195.1) 7. Worship, the sincere pursuit of divine values and the wholehearted love of the divine Value-Giver.
16:8.15 (195.2) The Urantia type of human personality may be viewed as functioning in a physical mechanism consisting of the planetary modification of the Nebadon type of organism belonging to the electrochemical order of life activation and endowed with the Nebadon order of the Orvonton series of the cosmic mind of parental reproductive pattern. The bestowal of the divine gift of personality upon such a mind-endowed mortal mechanism confers the dignity of cosmic citizenship and enables such a mortal creature forthwith to become reactive to the constitutive recognition of the three basic mind realities of the cosmos:
16:8.16 (195.3) 1. The mathematical or logical recognition of the uniformity of physical causation.
16:8.17 (195.4) 2. The reasoned recognition of the obligation of moral conduct.
16:8.18 (195.5) 3. The faith-grasp of the fellowship worship of Deity, associated with the loving service of humanity.
16:8.19 (195.6) The full function of such a personality endowment is the beginning realization of Deity kinship. Such a selfhood, indwelt by a prepersonal fragment of God the Father, is in truth and in fact a spiritual son of God. Such a creature not only discloses capacity for the reception of the gift of the divine presence but also exhibits reactive response to the personality-gravity circuit of the Paradise Father of all personalities.
The more spiritized we become the less constrained is our arena of freewill and the associated consequences of freewill.
118:6.4 (1299.7) All volition is relative. In the originating sense, only the Father-I AM possesses finality of volition; in the absolute sense, only the Father, the Son, and the Spirit exhibit the prerogatives of volition unconditioned by time and unlimited by space. Mortal man is endowed with free will, the power of choice, and though such choosing is not absolute, nevertheless, it is relatively final on the finite level and concerning the destiny of the choosing personality.
118:6.5 (1300.1) Volition on any level short of the absolute encounters limitations which are constitutive in the very personality exercising the power of choice. Man cannot choose beyond the range of that which is choosable. He cannot, for instance, choose to be other than a human being except that he can elect to become more than a man; he can choose to embark upon the voyage of universe ascension, but this is because the human choice and the divine will happen to be coincident upon this point. And what a son desires and the Father wills will certainly come to pass.
118:6.6 (1300.2) In the mortal life, paths of differential conduct are continually opening and closing, and during the times when choice is possible the human personality is constantly deciding between these many courses of action. Temporal volition is linked to time, and it must await the passing of time to find opportunity for expression. Spiritual volition has begun to taste liberation from the fetters of time, having achieved partial escape from time sequence, and that is because spiritual volition is self-identifying with the will of God.
118:6.7 (1300.3) Volition, the act of choosing, must function within the universe frame which has actualized in response to higher and prior choosing. The entire range of human will is strictly finite-limited except in one particular: When man chooses to find God and to be like him, such a choice is superfinite; only eternity can disclose whether this choice is also superabsonite.
Compared to all my previous religious studies, the UB teachings are unique regarding the morality and virtue and the faith experience of people. According to the Papers there is/was no fall of humankind and we do not have evil or sinful natures.
Just the opposite in fact. We are born to love and share and care for one another. We must be taught to be selfish and cruel and indifferent to suffering by others. We are born connected to Deity in multiple ways and with a Spirit nature as well as our material self.
We have yearnings, hunger, and thirst for personal happiness and a need to share joy. As we give light and love so we receive both by the reality-response mechanism of creation. We respond to the Spirit within and the Spirit likewise responds to our responses in a feedback loop that delivers the fruits of the Spirit.
We begin life connected and responsive to Spirit. That very connection makes us human, not animal, and makes us moral and able to become spiritized and grow in wisdom. The more we seek the Spirit and respond to the Divine Presence the more we are aligned with God’s will.
We don’t really compromise or surrender our own freewill so much as we seek and find that assurance and deep inner peace that comes from reality recognition and response. God is real. God is the origin and source of reality. The more real we become the more Godly becomes our motives, intentions, and priorities.
16:7.1 (192. Intelligence alone cannot explain the moral nature. Morality, virtue, is indigenous to human personality. Moral intuition, the realization of duty, is a component of human mind endowment and is associated with the other inalienables of human nature: scientific curiosity and spiritual insight. Man’s mentality far transcends that of his animal cousins, but it is his moral and religious natures that especially distinguish him from the animal world.
102:4.3 (1123.3) Man very early becomes conscious that he is not alone in the world or the universe. There develops a natural spontaneous self-consciousness of other-mindness in the environment of selfhood. Faith translates this natural experience into religion, the recognition of God as the reality—source, nature, and destiny—of other-mindness. But such a knowledge of God is ever and always a reality of personal experience. If God were not a personality, he could not become a living part of the real religious experience of a human personality.
Whenever any person experiences or expresses love, loyalty, kindness, duty, generosity, patience, compassion, or friendship then are they reflecting the Divine Presence and Connection that makes us human..the true human nature.
Anything mean and selfish is from the lower animal nature without the assistance of and connections to the 6th and 7th Adjutants of Worship and Wisdom.
God’s way and will is not so foreign to mortals…it’s truly in our nature and circuitry and tendencies I think.
It is only natural for tadpoles to become themselves as frogs by simply being tadpoles.
100:1.3 (1094.5) Give every developing child a chance to grow his own religious experience; do not force a ready-made adult experience upon him. Remember, year-by-year progress through an established educational regime does not necessarily mean intellectual progress, much less spiritual growth. Enlargement of vocabulary does not signify development of character. Growth is not truly indicated by mere products but rather by progress. Real educational growth is indicated by enhancement of ideals, increased appreciation of values, new meanings of values, and augmented loyalty to supreme values.
100:1.4 (1094.6) Children are permanently impressed only by the loyalties of their adult associates; precept or even example is not lastingly influential. Loyal persons are growing persons, and growth is an impressive and inspiring reality. Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole.
100:1.5 (1094.7) The soil essential for religious growth presupposes a progressive life of self-realization, the co-ordination of natural propensities, the exercise of curiosity and the enjoyment of reasonable adventure, the experiencing of feelings of satisfaction, the functioning of the fear stimulus of attention and awareness, the wonder-lure, and a normal consciousness of smallness, humility. Growth is also predicated on the discovery of selfhood accompanied by self-criticism—conscience, for conscience is really the criticism of oneself by one’s own value-habits, personal ideals.
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