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I don’t think service has to be through an organization. I do think that service should not be a part of your life, service should be all of your life regardless of who you associate with, in or out of an organization. Organizations can be useful but they have inherent dangers which must be vigilantly guarded against.
I have never seen a religious organization that doesn’t eventually fall victim to some form of dogma which sets up the “us versus them” type of thinking. This institutes insiders with the right way of thinking and outsiders with the wrong way of thinking, and it is a subtle, mischievous evil.
Along with the “us versus them” type of thinking come the rules of conduct and the sanctification of service. When people begin to think that their service must comply with what the group sanctions as being righteous, you’re already in the danger zone. All work is sacred and all work of a faith-son is service. Organizations are not necessary for service. The greatest service is done by the least of us, and most times, done in secret (140:6.11).
Said Jesus: “He who would be greatest among you, let him become server of all.”56:10.14
. . . and said your Master Son, “He who would be greatest among you let him be server of all.” 28:6.18
Remember, I have taught you that he who would be greatest among you should become the server of all. 175:1.10
Since we know that greatness cannot be divorced from goodness (28:6.21), and that true goodness is unconscious (140:8.26), then those who serve best are not even aware of it. No organization can claim that their version of service is better than any other (us versus them). Shaming others for not fitting into a group’s definition of service is unrighteous and evil. Belittling others for not joining an organization and griping about the lack of support for a given organization is a form of shaming.
The positive point is that others are able to make concrete what Jesus said, what he did and what he would have liked us to do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwIvld9z98A
Thank you Mark
Friendship enhances joys, glorifies the triumphs of life and fidelity is a treasure of the soul.
What Jesus “would have liked us to do” is looking to the past for guidance. Jesus is alive inside our minds right now, today. We don’t have to imagine what he “would have liked us to do”, we can know with a certainty what Jesus is actually doing right now because he is living in our higher mind, or soul. And it is this same Jesus who directs the loving contact between ourselves and all other selves, human and divine. Jesus not only directs the loving contact between living people today, he also directs the loving contact people have with things, the physical world. He is the spirit of idealistic beauty as well as the spirit of true relations. Allowing the Spirit of Truth to do his own work is also called humbleness, or a sense of smallness of self – humility.
Forget not, every one who exalts himself shall be humbled, while he who truly humbles himself shall be exalted. 167:1.5
I, my wife and our two children are the only known readers of The Urantia Book on Reunion Island.
For a month I have been unemployed without a job.
With more time, I will give lectures on the presentation of Urantia books in the communes of Reunion Island.
With God’s help, I hope to bring a fraternity of readers to Reunion Island.
At 45, it is part of my desire, my aspirations and my main objectives.
Thank you for sharing ideas.https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_R%C3%A9union
https://habiter-la-reunion.re/
Friendship enhances joys, glorifies the triumphs of life and fidelity is a treasure of the soul.
Yes Mark, the island of the meeting is east of Madagascar. (800 Km)
Reunion Island is a French department of the Indian Ocean.Friendship enhances joys, glorifies the triumphs of life and fidelity is a treasure of the soul.
The important thing in the life of a believer is to acquire for the creatures, this awareness of fraternal and universal friendships.
Love is the beacon that leads us to eternity, but also pushes us to act, here is now!
Samuel
Note: A hundred percent quote from Samuel Heine.
Friendship enhances joys, glorifies the triumphs of life and fidelity is a treasure of the soul.
Thank you Samuel for your interesting question.
In your opinion, can we explain in detail the meaning of the two sentences below? « And this brotherhood is destined to become a living organism in contrast to an institutionalized social organization. It may well utilize such social organizations, but it must not be supplanted by them.” (The Urantia Book 195: 10 The Future.11)
I am reminded of this reference:
99:5.1 While religion is exclusively a personal spiritual experience — knowing God as a Father — the corollary of this experience — knowing man as a brother — entails the adjustment of the self to other selves, and that involves the social or group aspect of religious life. Religion is first an inner or personal adjustment, and then it becomes a matter of social service or group adjustment. The fact of man’s gregariousness perforce determines that religious groups will come into existence. What happens to these religious groups depends very much on intelligent leadership. In primitive society the religious group is not always very different from economic or political groups. Religion has always been a conservator of morals and a stabilizer of society. And this is still true, notwithstanding the contrary teaching of many modern socialists and humanists.
The social or group aspect of religious life is inevitable. Personal religious experience – knowing God as a Father – goes hand-in-glove with its corollary – knowing man as a brother.
16:9.14 You become conscious of man as your creature brother because you are already conscious of God as your Creator Father. Fatherhood is the relationship out of which we reason ourselves into the recognition of brotherhood. And Fatherhood becomes, or may become, a universe reality to all moral creatures because the Father has himself bestowed personality upon all such beings and has encircuited them within the grasp of the universal personality circuit. We worship God, first, because he is, then, because he is in us, and last, because we are in him.
It is natural to want to find others who also have found The Urantia Book! Groups will form, because the book is the most fascinating book in the world. This book will not interest people who do not want to think deeply. With or without the book, brotherhood, as in the brotherhood of man, is becoming a reality, slowly.
102:8.1 The highest evidence of the reality and efficacy of religion consists in the fact of human experience; namely, that man, naturally fearful and suspicious, innately endowed with a strong instinct of self-preservation and craving survival after death, is willing fully to trust the deepest interests of his present and future to the keeping and direction of that power and person designated by his faith as God. That is the one central truth of all religion. As to what that power or person requires of man in return for this watchcare and final salvation, no two religions agree; in fact, they all more or less disagree.
Jesus shows us the way to immediate spiritual brotherhood. The harvest of spiritual brotherhood cannot be measured with human tools, because it is invisible. Social brotherhood is visible, and it is the fruit of spiritual brotherhood in my opinion. Social brotherhood requires personal transformations, as well as planetary adjustments.
52:6.2 Even on normal evolutionary worlds the realization of the world-wide brotherhood of man is not an easy accomplishment. On a confused and disordered planet like Urantia such an achievement requires a much longer time and necessitates far greater effort. Unaided social evolution can hardly achieve such happy results on a spiritually isolated sphere. Religious revelation is essential to the realization of brotherhood on Urantia. While Jesus has shown the way to the immediate attainment of spiritual brotherhood, the realization of social brotherhood on your world depends much on the achievement of the following personal transformations and planetary adjustments:
52:6.7 [ 5. Spiritual insight. The brotherhood of man is, after all, predicated on the recognition of the fatherhood of God. The quickest way to realize the brotherhood of man on Urantia is to effect the spiritual transformation of present-day humanity. The only technique for accelerating the natural trend of social evolution is that of applying spiritual pressure from above, thus augmenting moral insight while enhancing the soul capacity of every mortal to understand and love every other mortal. Mutual understanding and fraternal love are transcendent civilizers and mighty factors in the world-wide realization of the brotherhood of man.
The part and the whole:
12:7.11 Brotherhood constitutes a fact of relationship between every personality in universal existence. No person can escape the benefits or the penalties that may come as a result of relationship to other persons. The part profits or suffers in measure with the whole. The good effort of each man benefits all men; the error or evil of each man augments the tribulation of all men. As moves the part, so moves the whole. As the progress of the whole, so the progress of the part. The relative velocities of part and whole determine whether the part is retarded by the inertia of the whole or is carried forward by the momentum of the cosmic brotherhood.
I know the Baha’i religious organization well, I have read a lot of the books of these founders.
Here in Reunion Island, we have Baha’i friends.
For me it is a teaching that results from a religious evolution that lies between the Koran and the Bible.
The Baha’i religion does not surpass what Jesus had already said and done.
On the other hand, the Baha’is are living examples of what they believe in.
In thoughts, feelings and actions they gradually advance to concretely realize the era of light and life on Earth.
This can serve as an example to us and encourage us to come up with ideas to do the same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwIvld9z98A
As a believer and reader of The Urantia Book, I would like to live a living brotherhood like that!
I even have an inner aspiration and intuition that leads me to want and have to live this!
Urantia Brotherhood, without being a religious institution, must be able to achieve this!
Being hungry and intellectualizing about the meal is useless.
You have to eat the meal!!!!!
I think it is a vital need that comes from the God in us.
“The experience of dynamic religious living transforms the mediocre individual into a personality of idealistic power. Religion ministers to the progress of all through fostering the progress of each individual, and the progress of each is augmented through the achievement of all.
Spiritual growth is mutually stimulated by intimate association with other religionists. Love supplies the soil for religious growth—an objective lure in the place of subjective gratification—yet it yields the supreme subjective satisfaction. And religion ennobles the commonplace drudgery of daily living.”
(The Urantia Book Paper 100)
In a spirit of sharing.
Samuel
Friendship enhances joys, glorifies the triumphs of life and fidelity is a treasure of the soul.
I think it’s wise to think about what you’re eating before you eat it, otherwise you could accidentally eat garbage. But good food should be savored, which means you have to think about it, concentrate on its flavor and be thoroughly conscious of all its delicacies. Otherwise, why bother?
We experience the world through the mind. God lives in the mind. God adjusts thoughts. Thinking is essential to living. Don’t tell me that the intellect is a big waste of time. It’s so unwise to live without it. And wisdom is the “acme of intellectual performance” and “the goal of a purely mental and moral existence.” (36:5.12)
Thinking is never useless! It’s our thoughts that guide us Godward. It’s not our feelings about divine food, but our thoughts that truly matter because only the thinking mind can perceive God. How exactly is that a useless venture?
101:1.3 The divine spirit makes contact with mortal man, not by feelings or emotions, but in the realm of the highest and most spiritualized thinking. It is your thoughts, not your feelings, that lead you Godward. The divine nature may be perceived only with the eyes of the mind.
“Christianity is threatened by slow death from formalism, overorganization, intellectualism, and other nonspiritual trends. The modern Christian church is not such a brotherhood of dynamic believers as Jesus commissioned continuously to effect the spiritual transformation of successive generations of mankind.”(The Urantia book 195:9.10)
Thank you for sharing your opinion.
Samuel
Friendship enhances joys, glorifies the triumphs of life and fidelity is a treasure of the soul.
Okay…now I am getting a little confused and uncomfortable. There is an inference introduced that suggests the UB movement and its organizations are too focused on one thing but also not enough on another thing. A common enough opinion I suppose.
It is true, in my experience, that the Foundation, Brotherhood, Fellowship, and International Association have purposefully and intentionally chosen dissemination – the printing, publishing, translations, distribution, and popularization of the Revelation to the world and the organization and socialization and connectivity of the readership to promote the priorities and service expressions of the growing readership.
They have also specifically determined and chosen, by the repetitive group wisdom of members and leaders to not become or support the preference of those who wish to organize a religion or churches…which the very human authors of the documents under discussion here again demand. Those authors declaring failure in dissemination and default on the church creation….therefore the failure of the movement according to the disappointment of some.
Others often accuse or suggest that us forumites who gather in study and the movement generally only read and intellectualize but do not live the life of true religionist in loving service or even as citizens in loyal community service. Weird how some readers judge and generalize so many others over so long a time in so many places and cultures. A ridiculous expression of self righteous transference IMO. What do or have those ones done I wonder?
I’m wondering if people confuse intellectualism with rational thinking, something no human should go without. Using the intellect for study is NOT what they mean by intellectualism. If that’s what they meant, then thinking would be a nonspiritual trend. And if that were true, the indwelling fragment of God, who lives in your intellect, would also be nonspiritual. And why would they call mind a spirit ministry if it’s nonspiritual?? Makes no sense.
Intellectualism is defined as the belief that knowledge is derived purely from human reason at the expense of all other forms of understanding. Intellectualism is just another ‘ism, it’s a belief system, and when it’s nonspiritual, it’s called materialism. Materialism is what’s killing Christianity, not the intellect, or the use of the intellect. Quite the opposite.
The material, fact-finding level of knowledge discovered by the human intellect is different from the knowledge of truth, something discovered by the human intellect within the soul. So there are two kinds of intellectual pursuit of knowledge, spiritual and nonspiritual. By using the word intellectualism, TUB is referring to the material fact-finding type of nonspiritual thinking alone, knowledge without input from truth.
All thinking is designed to gravitate toward spirit. That’s what it naturally does, unless some fool chooses to twist it around backwards, which is what so many on this backward planet seem to prefer, unfortunately. Using the intellect is the only way to get to know God. If you have a better way to know God, or anything else for that matter, please let me know.
Not all use of the intellect results in intellectualism. The intellect covers both nonspiritual and spiritual realms of consciousness. Said Jesus: “Let experience teach you the value of meditation and the power of intelligent reflection.” (192:2.2) There’s real power in thinking, there’s a real gravitational pull in it unless you mess with it, or demonize it. I’m so tired of people thoughtlessly demonizing thought.
TUB is pretty clear that only intelligent creatures can know God. Seems to me that bashing the use of the intellect is treading in treacherous territory. I’d be very, very careful with such insinuations. Be wise as a serpent.
1:0.2 The myriads of planetary systems were all made to be eventually inhabited by many different types of intelligent creatures, beings who could know God, receive the divine affection, and love him in return.
1:2.3-4 The presence of this divine Adjuster in the human mind is disclosed by three experiential phenomena: 1. The intellectual capacity for knowing God — God-consciousness.
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