Episode:Jesus Culminates His Ministry—Final Preaching and Teaching (Part 8)
Alone with the young man, John Mark, Jesus explained: “Love, John, is the supreme reality of the universe when bestowed by all-wise beings, but it is a dangerous and oftentimes semiselfish trait as it is manifested in the experience of mortal parents. When you get married and have children of your own to rear, make sure that your love is admonished by wisdom and guided by intelligence.”
Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, One Day Alone with God, Early Home Life, Parental Love
Opening thought: There were few homes in the gentile world of those days that could give a child a better intellectual, moral, and religious training than the Jewish homes of Galilee. [123:2.5]
Closing thought: Parenting is a sacred trust, but you have the full support of the God of love, so fear not.
Summary by Brad
On synchronizing with truth
The Urantia Papers demand a lot of us. Reaching upward "from the humus" is not a trivial endeavor. A shallow reading of the text will appear to confirm all your preconceived opinions and your selfish desires. Taken in a shallow way, you'll naturally resonate with easy-to-digest passages and skim over those that are rugged or even disturbing. For example, a shallow read might suggest the Spirit of Truth and Thought Adjuster are here to do all your work for you, and you will be dragged heavenward on a free ticket to ride. Nope. Actually, Lucifer said that.
You must set a watch on yourself. Recall that you can rationalize anything, and the ease-seeking animal in you and the secular world constantly whisper that you shouldn't have to expend effort. Again, Lucifer actually said you don't have to expend effort..
You need to understand this. You need to know thyself and recognize that the animal in you does not want to put in the hard work of the Paradise ascent. What's the hard work? For one, you must take delight in cultivating your relationship to the Holy Spirit ministry and its three cosmic intuitions. You must seek truth, not affirmation. You must upreach toward God, first in a truth-seeking holistic mode of synthesis, not first in a fact-finding part-wise mode of analysis. The Spirit of Truth may have been poured out from above upon all flesh, but it won't absorb into your flesh without you doing doing your part: upreaching in a humble, sincere and truth-hungry manner. Actually, in many respects the Spirit of Truth ministers best to the rare human who's at the 3rd psychic circle or above.
Fear not; God gives you all you need to ascend. But this patient work is not for timid souls.
On proper foundations for higher notions
Jesus taught the love of God, yes, but he also taught that this concept of the love of God must be built atop a firm foundation of righteousness and law. "Law is life itself." [48:6.33] In Jesus' day this was easy for Jews to grasp; they were steeped in the law of God; they knew Psalm 1 by heart (the way of the righteous will flourish, but the ways of the ungodly will perish).
Fast forward 2,000 years. People today still get spun up by what Jesus said about love, but many have forgotten the firm foundation Jesus also upheld as crucial. Many Urantia Book readers think they can have the love of God without any underlying law of God. They think they can adopt something without its foundational prerequisites. Hmm. Actually, Lucifer said that. Use you clear thinking. Use your wise reasoning to recognize you need both eyes open, seeing both the love and law of God.
Put another way: do you throw out anything in The Urantia Papers that sounds like the Bible? Have you dismissed The Bible as "the big book of Jewish fairy tales?" Do you think you can possess the truths of the 5th ER while throwing out the Bible, the embodiment of the best of auto-revelation and epochal revelation across all of human history? If so, what are you left with? An illogical building: one with a second story but no ground floor. Put your foundation on morals, not on a magical thinking of an imagined ground floor? [103:3.4]
On braving the secular waters
There are 166 hours in the week outside of Symmetry of Soul. How many of those are spent in those secular waters, where humanism keeps trying to exalt itself over God? Can you keep God at the center, even as you walk through the secular world? Can you meditate day and night on the divine law? Psalms 1
We suggested the aphorism "God is law and love." This might be something to carry in our hearts and remind ourselves of constantly, even if it's philosophically a little redundant. We here at Symmetry of Soul don't mind being redundant if that's what it takes to "hold fast the eternal truth." [195:9.1]
177:2. Early Home Life
Upfront, we noted how the 5th ER reveals parts of Jesus' private ministry, parts he expressly did not want mixed with the 4th ER. They would have muddied the 4th ER's extremely simple message. Do you feel called to re-reveal the 4th ER, the faith of Jesus? Then you must take a vow of silence about all these matters shot through The Urantia Papers that offer up only more than the simple saving gospel message.
Parenting is a sacred trust, a "tremendous responsibility," and early home life can have eternal implications. The child is utterly dependent on the parents in the early years. The child's mother wholly provides a sense of place to the child, their first impressions of the universe. Their earthly father provides ideas about the directionizing Heavenly Father. Parents' loyalties permanently impress their children [100:1.4] because loyalties are tied to eternity (that's why they are permanently impressed by them).
There are countless ways for love of the parents to be false love and only one holistic way for love to be true love. Jesus mentions some forms of false love:
- Overloving—leading a child to self-exaltation, self-esteem, even self-love. Or overplaying the maternal instinct, smothering them, disallowing them from having original, potentially personal, experience. Indeed, all good things taken to an extreme become bad.
- Loveless maneuvering. Manipulating a child's innocent love, betraying their implicit loyalty, leading to lasting insecurity issues and possibly even affecting that child's relationship to eternity ("distortion" of personality is a frightening idea).
True love has wisdom, literally it's the "wise domain." What domain? The kingdom of heaven. Who is the king? The Father. What reigns? True love reigns in that domain. So how do we seek this wise love? Ensure your love originates in the domain of the inner life—the kingdom of heaven—and then translate it into the outer life with the aid of Mother Deity. We see how Mother Deity and Father Deity work together in this: Father love originates in the inner life, from eternity. That originative love in the inner life should be translated into the outer life using the wisdom of time, which is provided to us by the universal harmony of God the Mother. We are not "all-wise beings," but we still have access to this relative wisdom, these relative truths, if we will humbly seek to do God's will and allow as large of a cosmic totality attitude into our minds and hearts as we can grasp.
We discussed how wisdom and intelligence relate to wisdom, insight, and foresight, which led to a suggestion to "find the atoms" of the 5th ER, the foundational elements, before you try to understand the more complex molecules. We also briefly touched on the ages of three, eight, and twelve and inferences one can make about these as milestones in mental development. Listen to archive for more.
Humans are an accumulating experiential phenomenon. The truths of our lives began at our conception. The Father really initiated us; he is the First Source and Center; we are eternally His. Wise parents understands that their newly conceived child really belongs to God, not to them. They understand that establishing homes for the reception and training of children is the "highest service." [167:5.7] They take their deputy-ship, a sacred trust, seriously.
A reading from "God Calling"
Andrea suggested that, as you read about young John Mark with Jesus, imagine God saying:
I am your Friend. The companion of the dreary ways of life. I rob those ways of their grayness and horror. I transform them. Even in earthly friendships the common way, the weary way, the steep way, may seem a way to heaven if the presence of some loved human friend transforms them.
Have you ever realized the wonder of the Friendship you can have with Me? Have you ever thought what it means to be able to summon, at will, the God of the world? Even with a privileged visitor to an earthly king there is the palace antechamber, and the time must be at the pleasure of the king. But to my subjects, I have given the right to enter my presence when they will, nay, more, they can summon me to bedside, to workshop—and I am there.
When men seek to worship Me, they think of the worlds I rule over, of creation, of mighty law and order—and they feel the awe that precedes worship. To you, I say feel awe, feel the desire to worship Me in wondering amazement. But think too of the mighty, tender, humble, condescension of My Friendship. Think of Me in the little things of everyday life.
Notes by Brad
- Life is not about ecstatic mountaintop experiences [48:7.15] like a those ecstatic and transient "plug in" connections with the Spirit of Truth.
- Recall that the apostles on the day of Pentecost, with flash of hear from the newly arrived Spirit of Truth, immediately began speaking mistakes. [194:2.9]
- Careful with the "skim the cream off the top" metaphor.
- This author writes that as an indictment to himself if nothing else.
- You cannot only skim the cream off the top indiscriminately. You cannot throw out Psalm 1, or even just half of Psalm 1.
- "Hey, go easy on everyone out there. Everyone is a child of God." Sure. But Lucifer is a child of God but is iniquitous, so what's your point?
- Love is such a misused word on Uranta, the revelators are "almost pained" [2:5.11] using it.
- "Love [that] is admonished by wisdom and guided by intelligence."
- Perhaps wisdom, insight, and foresight can help here.
- We reasoned: if wisdom is already accounted for, then intelligence must be related to insight and foresight (the "light" or internal illumination hinted at in [144:3.21]). We recalled that another name for insight and foresight is "sagacity."
- Mental activity illuminated by insight and foresight might be intelligence.
- It's one evolutionary system. The reality of true love exists in the context of all else that is true: righteousness, divine ideals, the directionalized father family, everything.
