Urantia Book, Paper 196: Section 3 -- The Supremacy Of Religion

The Urantia Book -- Part IV. The Life And Teachings Of Jesus
PAPER 196: Section 3.
The Supremacy Of Religion

^{P2093:6, 196:3.1} Personal, spiritual religious experience is an efficient solvent for most mortal difficulties; it is an effective sorter, evaluator, and adjuster of all human problems. Religion does not remove or destroy human troubles, but it does dissolve, absorb, illuminate, and transcend them. True religion unifies the personality for effective adjustment to all mortal requirements. Religious faith -- the positive leading of the indwelling divine presence -- unfailingly enables the God-knowing man to bridge that gulf existing between the intellectual logic which recognizes the Universal First Cause as It and those positive affirmations of the soul which aver this First Cause is He, the heavenly Father of Jesus' gospel, the personal God of human salvation.
^{P2094:1, 196:3.2} There are just three elements in universal reality: fact, idea, and relation. The religious consciousness identifies these realities as science, philosophy, and truth. Philosophy would be inclined to view these activities as reason, wisdom, and faith -- physical reality, intellectual reality, and spiritual reality. We are in the habit of designating these realities as thing, meaning, and value.
^{P2094:2, 196:3.3} The progressive comprehension of reality is the equivalent of approaching God. The finding of God, the consciousness of identity with reality, is the equivalent of the experiencing of self-completion -- self-entirety, self-totality. The experiencing of total reality is the full realization of God, the finality of the God-knowing experience.
^{P2094:3, 196:3.4} The full summation of human life is the knowledge that man is educated by fact, ennobled by wisdom, and saved -- justified -- by religious faith.
^{P2094:4, 196:3.5} Physical certainty consists in the logic of science; moral certainty, in the wisdom of philosophy; spiritual certainty, in the truth of genuine religious experience.
^{P2094:5, 196:3.6} The mind of man can attain high levels of spiritual insight and corresponding spheres of divinity of values because it is not wholly material. There is a spirit nucleus in the mind of man -- the Adjuster of the divine presence. There are three separate evidences of this spirit indwelling of the human mind:

^{P2094:6, 196:3.7} 1. Humanitarian fellowship -- love. The purely animal mind may be gregarious for self-protection, but only the spirit-indwelt intellect is unselfishly altruistic and unconditionally loving.

^{P2094:7, 196:3.8} 2. Interpretation of the universe -- wisdom. Only the spirit-indwelt mind can comprehend that the universe is friendly to the individual.

^{P2094:8, 196:3.9} 3. Spiritual evaluation of life -- worship. Only the spirit-indwelt man can realize the divine presence and seek to attain a fuller experience in and with this foretaste of divinity.

^{P2094:9, 196:3.10} The human mind does not create real values; human experience does not yield universe insight. Concerning insight, the recognition of moral values and the discernment of spiritual meanings, all that the human mind can do is to discover, recognize, interpret, and choose.
^{P2094:10, 196:3.11} The moral values of the universe become intellectual possessions by the exercise of the three basic judgments, or choices, of the mortal mind:

Self-judgment -- moral choice.
Social-judgment -- ethical choice.
God-judgment -- religious choice.

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revelational evolution.

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spirit-value

oversophistication

nonprogression

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microscope

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subjectivity

objectivity

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best.

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riddles

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romancing

^{P2096:8, 196:3.29} Some men's lives are too great and noble to descend to the low level of being merely successful. The animal must adapt itself to the environment, but the religious man transcends his environment and in this way escapes the limitations of the present material world through this insight of divine love. This concept of love generates in the soul of man that superanimal effort to find truth, beauty, and goodness; and when he does find them, he is glorified in their embrace; he is consumed with the desire to live them, to do righteousness.

^{P2096:9, 196:3.30} Be not discouraged; human evolution is still in progress, and the revelation of God to the world, in and through Jesus, shall not fail.

^{P2097:1, 196:3.31} The great challenge to modern man is to achieve better communication with the divine Monitor that dwells within the human mind. Man's greatest adventure in the flesh consists in the well-balanced and sane effort to advance the borders of self-consciousness out through the dim realms of embryonic soul-consciousness in a wholehearted effort to reach the borderland of spirit-consciousness -- contact with the divine presence. Such an experience constitutes God-consciousness, an experience mightily confirmative of the pre-existent truth of the religious experience of knowing God. Such spirit-consciousness is the equivalent of the knowledge of the actuality of sonship with God. Otherwise, the assurance of sonship is the experience of faith.
^{P2097:2, 196:3.32} And God-consciousness is equivalent to the integration of the self with the universe, and on its highest levels of spiritual reality. Only the spirit content of any value is imperishable. Even that which is true, beautiful, and good may not perish in human experience. If man does not choose to survive, then does the surviving Adjuster conserve those realities born of love and nurtured in service. And all these things are a part of the Universal Father. The Father is living love, and this life of the Father is in his Sons. And the spirit of the Father is in his Sons' sons -- mortal men. When all is said and done, the Father idea is still the highest human concept of God.