Episode:God the Father—Relation to the Universe (Part 2)
Nature is the perfection of Paradise divided by the incompletion, evil, and sin of the unfinished universes. This quotient is thus expressive of both the perfect and the partial, of both the eternal and the temporal. Continuing evolution modifies nature by augmenting the content of Paradise perfection and by diminishing the content of the evil, error, and disharmony of relative reality.
Keywords: Urantia, God, Nature, Evolutionary Patterns, Experimental Plans
Summary by Kermit
Commentary after Review
Our pre-reading discussion re-visited the idea of Providence. Papers in part II refer to capital “P” providence as espoused by the Old Testament authors as erroneous ideas of a God micromanaging material affairs for his favored ones. That the revelators keep the word “providence” and give it fresh top down meaning relating it to Supremacy testifies to the thread of truth imbedded in its original use.
One of our SoS team has been in Africa and commented that life there while being very different in so many respects exhibited a commonness that we can attribute to the shared and common Holy Spirit encircuitment of mind which is superordinate to the also shared adjutant mind ministry of the Universe Mother Spirit.
4:2. God and Nature
This section reiterates in different ways the contrast between the immutability and unchanging nature of God and his external manifestations as modified and influenced by the downstream conduct of his delegated subordinates at the universe, constellation, planetary, and personal levels. It is a challenge to learn that not only evolutionary patterns are being worked out, but universe delegates of the Universal Father are engaging in cosmic experimentation.
Nature among other things is referred to as the physical habit of God, even God’s laws. Elsewhere [12:7.2] we are told, “The laws of God are merely the habits of God.” This is a confusion of long standing for mankind because there is much more transpiring at all levels of universe activity apart from God’s law. There is great contrast between what we envision God’s nature to be and what we observe in nature. Only in Havona is the law of God perfectly expressed. The personality management of the universes of time and space is removed from the non-experiential Father. And is this not the underlying theme of this entire arc from the beginning? We must ask ourselves with this difference between the experiential/experimental domain and the purely existential God, what is the transcendent context within which these aspects come together? How are they harmonized? The existential wholeness (Paradise Trinity) has spawned Mother Deity, the experiential. This is the context of wholeness which harmonizes these apparently divergent facts of universe existence. So it is that we speak of the Universal Father putting himself in cooperative subordination to the Paradise Trinity. And as such he attends, while through evolution, experience, and experiment the time-space things and beings gradually move toward the same cooperative subordination. As personality purposing aligns with energy-pattern, the power personality synthesis is achieved. Listen to the tidbit in the archive of the broadcast about how error, evil and sin can apparently interfere with the rule of God in the universe through forms superimposed upon God’s laws and worked out through the three energies (matter-energy, mind, and spirit). Modern man’s bias toward regarding the universe in terms of only matter-energy and motion displays a disturbing lack of collective memory in that philosophers long ago recognized the additional actualities of form and pattern in cosmic dynamics. Truly it is a transcendent context that allows the juxtaposition of the immutability, rectitude, and perfection of God with the experimental plans, executive blunders, and insurrectionary errors of his delegates in this going concern of the grand universe.
The author presents a simple quasi-algebraic definition of nature. “Nature is the perfection of Paradise divided by the incompletion, evil, and sin of the unfinished universes.” And he concludes the section with a likewise simple summary statement. “No, nature is not God. Nature is not an object of worship.” All of which brings us full circle to the earliest object of man’s response to the worship urge, nature. Again, listen to the archive for nuggets of elucidation too numerous to summarize succinctly.
4:3. God’s Unchanging Character
This section focuses on the God half of the contrastive pair addressed in the previous section (the numerator of our nature equation). Here the Divine Counselor attempts to disabuse us of the primitive ghost-cult God and encourage a more enlightened view of the real God. We are thus reminded that on worlds such as ours, scarred by rebellion and default, the consequent confusion, distortion, and perversion of concept is far more pervasive than on worlds not segregated by sin.
The second to last paragraph summarizes the section beautifully. “The infinite goodness of the Father is beyond the comprehension of the finite mind of time; hence must there always be afforded a contrast with comparative evil (not sin) for the effective exhibition of all phases of relative goodness. Perfection of divine goodness can be discerned by mortal imperfection of insight only because it stands in contrastive association with relative imperfection in the relationships of time and matter in the motions of space.” Followed by a familiar reminder that the finite mind of man can best approach the understanding of the Father’s infinite goodness by viewing such goodness as it is manifested in the life of his divine Sons, i.e. Michael of Nebadon in his incarnation as Jesus of Nazareth.
Notes by Brad
- Capital-P Providence is used in two ways in the revelators writing: in the true God the Mother holistic sense. But also "so-called Providence," the childish micromanagement idea we've all held for so long.
- They'll re-use a word, baggage notwithstanding, if there's even a thread of truth in it.
- Did the founders of the United States have a true-ish sense of providence? Yes and no. Perhaps their highest, most exalted and tenuous observations.
- Genuine providence casts a material shadow. But can you stop thinking that matter is the end unto itself.
- Throughout Section 2, a concept is repeated. There must be a nagging issue our author is trying to help us overcome.
- This concept of the habits of God
- [Paper 12:7.2]: "The laws of God are merely the habits of God, his way of repeatedly doing things; and he ever does all things well."
- It's far more complex than the singular imposition of law on the universe. There are experiential plans playing out, and there is personality.
- The nature of God is not the same as nature. Because we're in an experiential universe.
- We're not in the central universe, where a power-personality synthesis manifests in direct ways.
- But nature, out here, has a foundational purposing pattern. It's just that there is a separation between that energy purposing and personality purposing.
- Out here we must learn by leaping, not just looking.
- So once again, we're back to the truth that the Universal Father is an existential being: outside of time and space. It has to be this way, otherwise nature wouldn't be nature as we observe it.
- Existentially there is the Paradise Trinity. But then Mother Deity is the wholeness, the context, in which experiential and evolutionary universes can unfold.
- I think I wrote that correctly.
- So God's law can be influences by error, evil, and sin?
- What? Can sin modify the law of gravity? No, not that literal. No an alteration of foundational laws.
- But you can willingly impose form on things. Then the laws conform to that superimposed form.
- Hold your hand up to your face as an example. You mind isn't changing the foundational laws to make matter shaped like a hand. But there is form.
- Mind doesn't directly affect matter (they're absolutely separated). But there is interaction. Mind can impose form on matter.
- And that's how the whole universe is like, for good or ill.
- In addition to matter, motion, energy in the universe, there is form and pattern. Lately the mainstream has lost touch with the ancient truth Aristotle discovered.
- Personal acts may be righteous, but rectitude here is defined as a trait of Deity--more innate.
- In the moment we often imagine we have deep insight. But look back even a week later and it was most likely whimsy on your part. That's the way nature is out here.
- And yet you are still a personalized mind throughout such moments. You can take a whimsical thought and reality-ize it.
- Hence nature out here is "whimsical withal," pervaded by whimsy.
- Yet there is stability underneath. This author reports traveling to another continent and things still kindof, well, working. Despite all the whimsy. How unlikely ought that to be--the universe as an ongoing concern--if materialism was a true philosophy?
- Nature (from God) is presented here as foundational, with our experiential "stuff" superimposed on it.
- Many people imagine the Universal Father above all things, not foundational and below in a sense.
- God is the nucleus, not the circumference. God made himself the beginning, so all other can go beyond that.
- If humility is God-like, then God must be the most humble of all. Allows himself the be the start of things.
- But the Ghost Cult God (anthropomorphic God) is just a bundle of egotism we've projected onto this God concept.
- We so often observe nature in a part=wise fashion, and therefore conclude it is broken.
- But it's like seeing only one frame of a video.
- For us to recognize continuousness, we must have absence-of-continuousness for contrastive reasons.
- Sure, worship began with nature. But we ought to transcend that starting point. Nature is not God.
- If you're worshiping an anthropomorphic God, you're worshiping nature still.
- Section 4 is just a continuation of Section 3's God and Nature discussion, but focusing only on God--the "numerator" in the equation so to speak.
- Note that jealous and zealous are essentially the same word.
- Wrath and anger aren't even human--they are animal nature.
- Anger exalted is wrath.
- Animals feel pain, but only humans suffer--we can think about existentializing our pain.
- The use of the word "grieved" in "God is undoubtedly grieved" is a hint about material gravity (grieved-grave-gravity are all related).
- As in: ab absence of spirit gravity.
- This author notes, therefore, that we shouldn't stay in grief forever about, say, the death of family and friends. Remember spirit--where they are headed.
- God may be "infinitely superhuman," but He can be known by us.
- Because there is a circle of eternity, if you pursue God all the way infinitely up, so to speak, you come back around to where you started and discover the real God has been reborn within you.
- That is, not the ghost cult, anthropomorphic God. the real God.
