Having The Urantia Book to guide us through life is a blessing indeed. It’s an inside track to the truth, not just about God and the teachings of Jesus, but also about the nature of religion, spirituality, society, politics, history, and much more. Many of us, as we begin to grasp these truths, become fired up with the zeal of the newly converted, feeling a strong impulse to sing the praises of the revelation to all we meet.
This is a good thing, but only as long as we keep ourselves in check and balance. It’s easy to give unwanted advice or to tell others what they should think and how they should live. Any such notion of moral superiority is a dangerous quagmire, and nowhere is this more evident than in politics.
For most of human history, religion and politics were inseparable. The earliest records began with the Sumerian city-states around 5,000 years ago. Each of these city-states had its own temple dedicated to a patron god or goddess. And when they fought each other, one important objective was to raid the enemy’s temple to seize their idols, which would make their victory complete.
It was common for conquering tribes or nations to claim religious superiority by building their own sacred buildings over those of their ideological enemies. Early Christians, for example, built their first churches over the remains of Greek and Roman temples. Later, conquering Muslims constructed mosques over non-Islamic places of worship; for instance, the Hagia Sophia of Turkiye was once a Byzantine Christian church. In recent times, Hindu nationalists destroyed a historic mosque in the northern city of Ayodhya, India, and then built a Hindu temple over the ruins. This human inclination to obliterate the politico-religious foundations of perceived adversaries runs throughout history.
But it was not enough to destroy a foe’s temples. A prime objective of many conquerors was to convert their foes to their religion by whatever means necessary. In ancient Judea, the Maccabees under the leadership of John Hyrcanus I (134-104 BC), forcibly converted neighboring populations to Judaism. Another example is Emperor Charlemagne (748-814), who was the first ruler to unite West and Central Europe. Many of his social and political policies were vast improvements that had a lasting influence on European civilizations. But he was adamant that all his subjects become Christian, or be put to the sword. And during the religious wars of the Crusades (1095 to 1291), Christians and Muslims alike forcibly converted their captors.
Many deeply religious people have a hard time tolerating the beliefs of others. But this human urge to convert others to their beliefs is not limited to religion. While intolerance is often associated with religious views, it is a matter of historical record that humanity has suffered far more death and destruction through endless clashes between conflicting political and economic ideologies. Take, for instance, the long wars fought between liberalism and authoritarianism, or those between capitalism and communism. Other instances include wars over land and resources, as well as colonialism and the right to rule.
The evidence for this is laid out in the Encyclopedia of Wars by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod (2004). They report that less than 7 percent of all recorded wars were religious wars. And the casualties from these wars account for less than 4 percent of all war casualties.
Is Jesus on Your Side?
It’s not unusual in times of political turmoil to hear religious people of all stripes espouse partisan views that, they believe, can be justified in the name of God, Allah, or Ram, or their sacred scriptures. Even Jesus has been dragged into the fray. But what would Jesus say about our present politics? Probably not much.
Jesus once expressed his political ideas and ideals when he lived with the Zebedee family (129.1.10), but after that, he said little (as revealed to us). The only other time he discussed politics at length was when he delivered the Urmia lectures. But these discourses consisted of very general topics, such as political sovereignty, political power, and political evolution (134.5.0). Nonetheless, he did advocate representative (democratic) governments and the need for world government.
But when it comes to more specific stances on politics or his political preferences, it is clear that Jesus did not express any view, nor did he take sides, at least nothing he was willing to share with his apostles or disciples. He kept quiet on this topic for good reason. If he had taken any side or formulated any view at all, you can be sure that it would later become a dogmatic position of his followers, thereby interfering with the natural political evolution of humanity.
Jesus’ mission was purely spiritual. He wanted the people of Urantia to become more aware of the true nature of God and thereby inspire them to follow the guidance of the Spirit within. Jesus knew that, by increasing God-consciousness in the minds of men and women, he would enable them to solve their political and social problems for themselves.
Knowing the mission of Jesus, we may wonder what role we should play in this time of social conflict. It seems there is no simple answer. Much depends on whether we wish to be a gospel messenger, a disciple, a follower, or a politician. As Jesus said, if we wish to serve God as ordained ministers, we must be willing to forsake all. There can be no divided affections (163:2.3). He therefore instructed his disciples to remain politically aloof.
But not all of us are required to be religious leaders or disciples. Many who are spiritually inspired are merely good citizens, perhaps engaged in other important social, artistic, or industrial endeavors, and a few of us are politicians. Indeed, rather than avoiding politics, The Urantia Book makes it clear that political service is highly desirable.
It is also clear in the same paragraph that politicians and civil servants are in categories apart from religious leaders. It seems we must choose between political service and spiritual service.
Does the separation of church and state mean that our spiritual views should never interfere with our political duties? Once again, there is no black-or-white answer. Carrying out our political duties in a reasonable manner while dedicating our personal lives to the will of God is an acceptable way to function. But we would err if our duties are swayed, for example, by the belief that certain political leaders are of divine origin or that, long ago, God jotted down all the social and political rules for us to obey.
Sacred Government
While Jesus left us to our own political devices, The Urantia Book has much to say on the topic. Why does the book go into so much detail and give us so much political advice when Jesus avoided it? We can only assume the book is intended for a specific time frame of social and spiritual evolution, and that in this time, Urantia civilization is in great need of change.
One important point that the narrators emphasize is the spiritual aspect of government. The division of government into executive, legislative, and judicial functions is a divine administrative structure. This is the way “celestial politicians” administer the whole universe. But apart from these sacred divisions, all else is experiential and evolutionary on the inhabited worlds.
Papers 70 to 72 offer many ideas to improve our present society and government. However, the narrators never tell us what we should do at any particular moment. They are only offering guidelines for the future evolution of an ideal representative government. They are offering ideas and policies that we can strive to implement in the near future. And of course, we can compare their suggestions to our present state of politics to get some idea of how far astray we may be.
But are the people of the world (or even Urantia Book students) ready to accept all recommendations in the book? If we truly believe that the suggestions in these papers are Deity-approved instructions and procedures for improving our politics and society, then we should dutifully accept them all as the will of God (at least for this dispensation). However, acceptance is easier said than done. It is a troubling fact that many of the directives put forward in the book are far more draconian than most people of Urantia are willing to tolerate at this time, and perhaps for some time to come. As a striking example, see Paper 72, “Dealing with Crime.”
It is tempting to “cherry pick” specific ideas from the book—especially those that support our cherished political beliefs—and to ignore (or misread) those that do not. This selective choosing of “truths” conflicts with the whole truth of the revelation, and this alone should drive home the point that what we strongly believe—our ingrained social mores and political views—may have little or nothing to do with the will of God. Instead, such notions may prove detrimental to the progressive evolution of politics and society as per the divine plan.
When it comes to politics and points of view, we must ask ourselves if we have the spiritual courage to accept the entire revelation, no matter how unpalatable to current tastes some suggestions may be.
The Role of the Most Highs
We know that Jesus does not interfere in our politics, but we also know that the Most Highs certainly do. The question is, how do they interfere? Because they “rule in the nations of men,” have they ordained certain people as government leaders, the chosen of God, as it were? No mortal knows for sure, but there may be some truth to this.
The Most High rules in the kingdom of men and gives it to whomsoever he will. (43:3.4)
Nevertheless, we should recall that the Most Highs are not concerned with individuals but rather with races of people, with national groups, and with the whole of humanity. As Jesus said in Urmia:
The objective of the Most Highs is the greater good of the whole of humanity, not one nation, and certainly not one individual. But a sobering thought is the obvious fact that these Vorondadek Sons are not necessarily interested in stopping wars, correcting injustices, or preventing human suffering, at least not in the short term. And in the interim, they appear to give us enough rope to hang ourselves.
Even so, if we are willing to accept the argument that the Most Highs choose our rulers, we have to wonder why they would have sanctioned the likes of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Idi Amin, or Attila the Hun. And these are just a few. There are many horrifying accounts of notorious leaders in the long stretch of world history.
If indeed the Most Highs sanction such rulers in “the kingdoms of men,” one possible explanation is that they allow such tyrants to rise to power so that, through much suffering, we will finally come to realize that we cannot allow such tyrants to rise to power. And if we, the people, continue to ignore the horrific lessons of history, then we must repeat them one more time until we get it right.
Put another way, the above quote is saying that a nation and its leaders can’t be any better than the people who make it up. But this is true only in democracies. Unfortunately, in many countries, the people do not get to choose their leaders and they have little to do with government policies. Instead, these so-called leaders are nothing more than strongmen who have forcibly taken control—they are no more than crime bosses. And even in some democracies, leaders have been elected to office only to betray their citizens at a later date. This serves to underscore another recommendation in The Urantia Book — and that is to make sure we have qualified politicians who are “technically trained, intellectually competent, socially loyal, and morally fit” (71:2.19).
Pursuing Ideal Government
The Urantia Book makes our short-term political and social goals abundantly clear. If we are willing to couple these ideas with the leadings of the Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of God, we are sure to make progress, no matter how slow it may be. And if we are still unsure of the direction to take, we can always fall back on the divine realities of truth, beauty, and goodness. For all people, organizations, and nations, we ask: Are they truthful? Are they good? Are they gracious? Are they compassionate?
Jesus did not give us political guidance; our job is to figure it out for ourselves. The Urantia Book gives us some advice and direction, but a review of the ages of light and life (Paper 55) makes it clear that any political suggestions it has to offer are to improve our immediate politics—they are not for the ages of light and life in the far distant future.