|
Are You a Truth-Seeker?
The Urantia Papers elevate truth, and truth seeking, to much grander levels than simply the endeavor to be correct, or right, or in accord with the letter or law of truth. They redefine truth as that which has "true meanings on spirit levels."
"Truth often becomes confusing and even misleading when it becomes dismembered, segregated, isolated, and too much analyzed. Living truth teaches the truth seeker aright only when it is embraced in wholeness and as a living spiritual reality, not as a fact of material science or an inspiration of intervening art."
Addressing believers during his resurrectional appearance in Phoenicia, Jesus said, "You rejoice to know that the Son of Man has risen from the dead because thereby you know that you and your brethren shall also survive mortal death." The next sentence commences with the conditional word, "but."
How easily we overlook the conditional phrases and clauses, just hearing what we want to hear.
For twenty centuries, Christians have announced "believe and be saved," and gullible souls have responded, "I believe," and then gone ahead with their daily lives, just like before. Urantia Book believers, too, have read into the phrase, "the faintest flicker of faith" as carrying the assurance of their salvation and the guarantee of their immortality--regardless.
Lawyers often issue reminders of the necessity to read the fine print before signing a legal contract--for what is in that fine print is legally binding even though it may have been left unread and undone.
The follow up to Jesus' introductory remarks to the Phoenician believers was, "But such survival is dependent on your having been previously born of the spirit of truth-seeking and God-finding." Which puts a quite different light on his opening remark.
However, Jesus did not say that our survival was dependent on us having found the truth or that we must actually have found God. He did say we must be seeking after truth as well as seeking to find God. We must be "tryers."
"The bread of life and the water thereof are given only to those who hunger for truth and thirst for righteousness--for God."
This requirement to hunger for truth, to be truth-seeking is worthy of much attention. We cannot hunger and thirst for half truths. Contentment with a half truth is also contentment with a half falsehood.
But absolute truth is simply unavailable to us mere mortals. For us, truth is evolutionary and progressive; we must always seek the closest approach to truth of which we are currently capable. In this search we are never alone.
Describing the Spirit of Truth, we are told, "Every soul receives him in accordance with the love for truth and the capacity to grasp and comprehend spiritual realities."
"The Spirit of Truth guides into all truth; he is the teacher of an expanding and always growing religion of endless progress and divine unfolding. This new teacher will be forever unfolding to the truth-seeking believer that which was so divinely folded up in the person of the Son of Man."
There is an "ultimate" state that really is attainable here on Urantia by such as we are.
"Let me emphatically state this eternal truth: If you, by truth co-ordination, learn to exemplify in your lives this beautiful wholeness of righteousness, your fellow men will then seek after you that they may gain what you have so acquired. The measure wherewith truth seekers are drawn to you represents the measure of your truth endowment, your righteousness. The extent to which you have to go with your message to the people is, in a way, the measure of your failure to live the whole or righteous life, the truth-co-ordinated life."
So even though it may be "per ardua ad astra," let's reach out for the stars.
|
|
