When all else has failed, we turn to God.  We shouldn’t
blame God for that’s blasphemy.  Nevertheless, we do it all the
time.  I suspect that God understands and forgives.  Throughout
the centuries two cries have resonated with different variations:
“Where was God when this tragedy unfolded?”
“If there was a God, would he permits such a thing to happen?”

After reading the Urantia Book, and giving careful
consideration to these weighty questions, I have come to the
following conclusion:  God has self-imposed constraints on
Himself and all Higher Personalities.  This manifests itself in
many ways.  Before I talk about that, let me remind my readers
that they should formulate their own opinion on the matter.  The
relationship between any one of us and God is strictly personal.
Indeed, here, I share only some of my views.  Most elements of my
relationship with God remain in eternal confidence between my
Maker and myself. 

       1. Free Will

If there is one universal law, above all others, in the
universe, it is free will.  It is respected by God and all the
Higher Beings that assist him in His supernal work.  The reason
is obvious:  Why create intelligent life on the worlds of time
and space if it is not given the power to make choices?  Once
intelligent life arises on a planet, the Higher Powers are no
longer allowed to interfere.  The humans on our planet made their
share of mistakes, and still do.  They learned and slowly
advanced until they reached the civilized age we now enjoy.

Free will is so important, it would be unthinkable to ask
the Creator to sometime do away with it and intervene in our
affairs.

Does that mean that we are left completely on our own?  No.
There are indirect means used to help us.  It’s complex and
difficult to explain.  Let me attempt to give you two examples.

When a human (or group of humans) has a groundbreaking idea
(say on the environment) they are influenced by Higher
Personalities to pursue it, and they are given additional
knowledge to help them along the way.

There is group on our system capital made out of 24
counselors, they constitute the present advisory-control body of
Urantia.  Their role is to supervise the affairs of our planet.
Very briefly, they function by working through advanced humans to
defuse a potentially dangerous situation.  I suspect that they
played, more than once, a major role in avoiding a nuclear
holocaust.

     2. The Evolutionary Nature of the Material World

Everything in the universe is evolving.  No object or life
is static.  Our planet evolved from a totally uninhabitable
sphere to the beautiful world we now live in.  In the process,
the continents, the sea, the mountains, and the weather were in a
constant state of flux.  This is still the case, albeit to a
lesser extent.  I do not know whether the planet will ever
stabilize.  Not surprisingly therefore we have earthquakes,
volcano eruptions, tornadoes, and floods.  Human lives are lost,
and great misery ensues.

After the tsunami of 2004, when thousands of lives were lost, again and again, we heard the cry that God was indifferent to our pain.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  God cannot suspend his natural laws.  Tragedies like that happen billions of times across the universe.  If God intervened everytime, he would make a mockery of his creation.  The Urantia Book tells me that there have been on occasion interventions in the universe.  However, I do not remember the Author of the paper giving any specific example.

On the biological level, life after it is implanted on a planet (it never arises spontaneously!) will evolve and explode into endless varieties of plants and animals.  Sooner or later, an intelligent animal will result.  As we all know, this is done through mutations.  Some of these mutations will result in undesirable life,  for example, some microorganisms become parasitic and kill countless people and animals.  The plague for example killed one third of Europe in the 13th century.  Nothing could be done at the time.  Today we can deal with many infectious diseases.  But it’s an ongoing battle.

    3. Self-Inflicted Wounds

  On a planetary level, we had two world wars in the 20th
century.  Millions of lives were lost.  The suffering that ensued
cannot be grasped by the human mind.  Was God responsible for
that?  After all, this was the 20th century, we were supposed to
be too advanced to engage in such foolish wars.  And yet we did.

On a national level, the budget of advanced countries amount
to billions of dollars.  Yet the poor and the helpless are left
behind.  How is it possible, in the 21st century, to have
homeless people in rich nations such as the U.S. and Canada?  In
Canada the weather is unforgiving; every winter people die on the
streets of our major cities.  They freeze to death for want of a
a warm bed. 

On an individual level, many of us, eat too much, drink too
much, smoke, do drugs, or all of the above.  It has been said
that the body is the temple of the soul.  If so, this temple is
desecrated everyday and everywhere.

 But the news is not all bad.  We have made tremendous
progress since the dawn of civilization.  We have advanced both
on the technical and social levels.  As mentioned in a previous
article, we are destined to advance even further.  

Site Search Tags:
none