Episode:God the Father—Relation to the Universe (Part 1)
There is a providence of divine outworking on your world, but it is not the childish, arbitrary, and material ministry many mortals have conceived it to be. The providence of God consists in the interlocking activities of the celestial beings and the divine spirits who, in accordance with cosmic law, unceasingly labor for the honor of God and for the spiritual advancement of his universe children.
Keywords: Urantia, God, Providence, Coordination, Immanence
Summary by Kermit
Commentary after Review
As we continue with our arc on God the Father we are confronted with ever more profound ways in which the revelation’s explication of the seeming remoteness and transcendence of God calls into question long and widely held anthropomorphic ideas of our Heavenly Father. Effort and struggle are required to attempt an understanding of these advanced concepts in the revelation. We find ourselves in the troublesome predicament where through faith, we come to believe more than we can know. Rather than exerting a faith grasp, we are invited to liberate our faith grasp anchor in eternity and stand on trust. As we note elsewhere in the revelation, the faith and trust pair are presented with trust having the foundational position upon which faith is exercised.
Paper 4 God’s Relation to the Universe
The Universal Father has an eternal purpose pertaining to each and all aspects of triune reality. As might be expected, the eternal purpose of the transcendent God is comprehensible to only his divine coordinates and his highest associates. First and foremost, the central creation can be seen as the handiwork of God for his own pleasure and satisfaction, as well as being the pattern universe for the time-space creations and finishing school for ascenders. Suffice it to say the Universal Father’s eternal purpose is infinitely, transcendently inscrutable to most creatures high and low. Elsewhere in the revelation we are told that there are seven major purposes playing out in the seven supercreations. The seven purposes of superuniverse evolution are operative throughout all seven superuniverses, but each supercreation will give fullest expression to only one of these purposes.
4:1. The Universe Attitude of the Father
The providence of God has long been misunderstood by mankind. As with virtually all of man’s concepts of God, providence is misinterpreted as being focused on material concerns and temporal considerations. The word’s origin literally means foresight. As described in the revelation the providence of God consists in the interlocking activities of the celestial beings and the divine spirits who, in accordance with cosmic law, unceasingly labor for the honor of God and for the spiritual advancement of his universe children. Can we appreciate that the apparently negative circumstances of evolutionary life which promote and stimulate the development of the nine desirable aspects of living we recently studied in the inevitabilities are examples of God’s providence? Even so, we are assured the divine providence is never arrayed in opposition to true human progress, either temporal or spiritual. We do not naturally perceive providence at work in the vicissitudes of life save perhaps in hindsight.
We noticed and discussed the revelators’ capitalization of the word providence. What followed was a somewhat complex journey wherein lower case “p” providence is an expression designating the Almighty Supreme—the summarizer of the finite. Upper case “P” Providence refers to the personal purposive aspect of the Supreme Being—the Universal Mother, the focalizer. Listen to the archive of the broadcast for the details.
The revelators employ biblical passages which, when viewed apart from materialistic interpretations and in keeping with the transcendent nature of God’s engagement with reality, convey truth in his role as infinite upholder. Any consternation we might experience in our attempt to understand these concepts should be antidoted by the revelators’ first-person confessions that despite their high origins and extensive universe experience; and notwithstanding their great knowledge of universe affairs, they are constantly confronted with cosmic reactions they cannot fathom. They continually encounter apparently fortuitous conspiracies of the interassociation of forces, energies, intellects, and spirits which they cannot satisfactorily explain. Conversant as they are with the working of phenomena directly resulting from the functioning of the Universal Father, Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit and to a large extent the Isle of Paradise, our Divine Counselor author is perplexed by what appears to be the performance of the three Absolutes of potentiality—the Unqualified Absolute, the Deity Absolute, and the Universal Absolute.
Additionally, our author cites the living presence of the evolving Supreme Being as the likely function of Providence—the realm of the Supreme Being and the Conjoint Actor as the far flung and generally unrecognizable control of the coordination and interassociation of all phases and forms of universe activity that causes such a panoply of universe phenomena so unerringly to work out to the glory of God and for the good of men and angels.
In a larger sense our author ascribes the apparent accidents of the cosmos to an aspect of the finite drama of the time-space adventure of the Infinite in his manipulation of the Absolutes.
Notes by Brad
- Can you liberate your faith? Plant your feet on trust.
- Think you have a better definition of God from this study? How about a better definition of faith?
- How about trust? That's what true hope points to.
- Allow faith to be something that doesn't anchor you. Allow it to be living, to grow.
- Only once in the 5th ER is it written "trust and faith," and it's telling when it happens.
- Allow faith to be liberated from being in the anchor position.
- Also, trust is, by analogy, a concept many of us already may have from childhood trust of our caregivers. Can you transfer that seat of hope, in your 20s and 30s and beyond, to God the Father?
- Could be less baggage-laden than transferring your problematic childhood notions of faith...
- We all are capable of projection. On a massive and unobserved scale.
- See if you can, each day, become a bit more aware of your own projections, of the forms in your mind into the outer life, and see them for what they are.
- Paper 4 starts in a bit of a curious way.
- God has not temporal purposes, only eternal purposes. God is not the God of the ghost cults--not your grandfather's God.
- Not even beings born in eternity understand God's eternal purpose.
- So it's highly unlikely our primitive ghost cult ideas about this are on the nose.
- Even if you think you understand aspects of Havona based on study of the 5th ER...
- Well, sure. It's a pattern for our universe. It's our finishing school, far off. But there are so many other reasons it exists.
- So don't misinterpret paragraph 2: it's suggesting Havona's purpose appears to be clear. But it is not.
- they aren't patting us on the back for a correct deduction. They're patting us on the head saying, "Aww, that's cute. Be patient."
- Our author cheerfully undertakes explaining all of this to us.
- That despite we cannot factually grasp much of it at all.
- But he is addressing the truth in us, not our fact-grabbing ability.
- We have misunderstood the providence of God.
- Misunderstood is a strong word. It implies self-disruption. Giving badness form in your mind. Something that is wrong.
- Our misunderstanding is so warped: down in time, down in the parts instead of the whole. That's disruption.
- Our author here uses the word "interlocking" as a hint of associativity--a better onramp to understanding providence.
- Providence literally means foresight in the original Latin.
- If providence is about spiritual advancement... uh-oh
- Don't expect an indolent, comfortable life.
- Because spiritual advancement only from an unnatural positive response to a negative stimulus.
- So expect struggle.
- If you define providence in material terms, you'll detect an absence of providence... or even God.
- Despite your inability to see the progressing-ness of the universe, can you just know it is progressing?
- Watch out for projection. Feel like the universe doesn't look like it's progressing? It's probably you that isn't progressing.
- If you keep trying to impose your notions of progress onto the universe, you'll be frustrated. Leaving only one option: rebellion.
- It's natural to feel tension when you read "there is Providence"and then observe the world as it is today, even the emergency.
- It's unnatural to transcend that tension.
- even if another dark ages should come to pass, no realharm can befall us. There is no real retrogression, given the watchword of the universe is progress'.
(this author's notes end at about the 1 hour mark, because of technical issues)
