God Refined; Part 2: A Different Story

God Refined: A Proposal for Peace
Part 2: A Different Story
Bob Kezer © 1 August 2006
Revised 7 February 2007
ISBN: 978-0-6151-3810-7
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Part 2
A Different Story

Humans are part of the material realm of time and space. The worlds of these universes are where potential souls are born, personalities developed, and survival instincts firmed. As biological beings we have evolved, as have all other species. Evolution, whether according to Darwin’s theory or another, is happening.

Sometime during our first several years most of us developed the ability to choose between right and wrong: this differs us from an animal mind. It means we have become creatures capable of choosing God’s will: we can form eternal souls. At the instant we made our first moral choice, a part of God entered our minds and a process of spiritualization began.

We are finite: we have a beginning and an end. By ourselves we cannot comprehend concepts of eternity, infinity, and universality. To know God, we must experience love, and our divine guide leads us through the process. This portion of our ultimate Creator, that entity from the First Great Source and Center, speaks to us as that quiet voice in our heart.

After a period of time, whether this happens during the mortal life or in one of those to come, the developing personality can reach the full, free, and unreserved choice to do God’s will. This is when the two sides, the human and the Divine, meld. This fusion forms a new eternal being, a soul, and never again will the two separate.

Sometime after death we are brought to a point of decision: do we wish to continue on with eternal life doing God’s will, or not? This choice is freely given and should be received as such. No one has any price to pay for being here, no one is born in sin, and everyone is invited to continue the journey.

Once eternal life has been accepted, spiritual progression happens through individual self-effort. It is not reasonable to think we can have human failings one moment, and lose them the next just because we die. We are expected to seek our divine legacy.

God does not send us to hell for punishment, nor purgatory to become redeemed, nor heaven to live a life of ease. This does not mean that the willful transgression of God’s laws do not have consequences: they do. But rather than God judging and then condemning us, the seeds of our own destruction are inherent within our choices. Each one either moves us closer to, or farther away, from God.

Every time we choose against divine will, we harden ourselves and increase the chance we will do so again: the pattern becomes set over time. We become cynical, sarcastic, and intolerant – our emotions dominate our feelings and we lose our ability to love our neighbor. When these people are given the choice to go on, they decide not to.

When a personality rejects our Creator’s gift of eternal life, annihilation occurs. The entity of God within the person takes all of value that ever happened in that life, and then returns to its source: nothing good is ever wasted. The human personality then becomes as if it never was, just like any other animal mind that dies.

No matter how far removed from God a potential soul becomes, any flicker of desire for forgiveness will be answered. Each of us has more mercy available than we could ever require: none who desire eternal life will ever be turned away.

Wherever a person leaves off down here, at that exact level they start again. Some of us may have longer, more rigorous journeys to endure, but all can participate. In this way everything is in alignment: free will reigns; eternal life is freely given; justice, fairness, and mercy correlate; spiritual evolution stems from personal decisions, and never is there cause for us to fear our divine parent.

Those who accept God’s gift enter into a progressive system of training and bodily transformation. We do not go from the material directly to the spiritual: we must grow into it. While the spiritual can access the material, the material cannot know the spiritual. This next period helps us resolve our failings, teaches us our place in the celestial hierarchy, and readies us to go forth in joy doing our Creator’s will.

The intervening space between the material and the spiritual is known as the morontia. This is the home of the mansion worlds, hundreds of progressive training spheres created for us to journey through during successive incarnations. Ours is a process of transformation: each new body is made of finer matter as we lose the vestiges of our human failings and take on divine traits.

Incarnating from here to somewhere else is the only way we do not limit God to human reasoning. There is no bank of souls that can ever be emptied. None of us – at least our personalities – has existed before, and we do not keep coming back to this sphere for endless cycles of life. These are concepts created by finite minds: humans attempting to make sense the premonitions they feel, but don’t understand.

Only by allowing for unlimited biological procreation can mortal limits of our Creator be removed. If we all kept coming back to the same planet over and over, there could only be so many of us. This keeps the numbers within our conceptual ability, but it suggests God is static rather than an evolutionary being. Spiritual progression through a series of lives occurs, just not back to this world.

Accounts of people having the sense they have lived before have occurred throughout time. This may be other than it seems. Those potential souls that have rejected eternal life freed the entity of God within them. This being was then able to later pair with another mind in its quest to form a new soul. In this process images from other lives lived by this spirit may transfer to the new person they invest. What we sense is not that we have lived before, but rather that the God within us may of had other life experiences before ours.

We are bound to each other through these entities stemming from the eternal: God knows all and they are God. Everything that has happened, is now occurring, or will take place on the material world, is concurrent in the spiritual. While our abilities differ, all of us at some level can access our eternal side. Knowing about our unified nature helps us understand that some people may glimpse images from elsewhere they think to be their own.

From our ultimate Creator came all matter, but this divine parent did not create the material worlds. This belief causes the major problem inherent in all religions: if God is benevolent and all-powerful, then why are so many people suffering? If our Creator is perfect, should not all manifested by God also be perfect? This contradiction between God being perfect and our world suffering can only be explained by placing us outside of God’s direct control: our Creator delegates as we do.

God is perfect, but the material realm is not: there is universal justice, but accidents happen. In confusion, we base our understanding of God’s love on earthly events: we pattern the infinite after the finite. Just because people harm each other does not mean God harms us. Rather, a perfect being allowed imperfect souls to be created so they, through their own free choice of will, could achieve perfection and join with that Creator.

Those in the material can never prove the existence of the spiritual: the finite cannot measure the eternal. Nor is that our purpose. As our science advances we learn more about our planet, our universe, and ourselves – essential knowledge for solving today’s problems.

Science and belief in an ultimate creative force – God – do not have to contradict: people can embrace their spiritual urgings without having to discount their education. The research showing the age of our world, the evolution of species, and the fact there is no genetic basis to the concept of race, is solid.

The big bang theory suggests all matter is exploding forth from what was at one time a tiny speck of condensed energy. At the molecular level we are taught there is vast space between the actual particles that make up the material world. It seems our science is telling us that what was once dense, has become diffused. But from where did that original explosion – containing within itself the stuff of billions of worlds – come?

Imagine God residing at the center of a spiritual dimension of absolute perfection that dwarfs all of material creation. From a creative outburst a pinprick opened in the fabric of God’s domain: in an instant our universe burst forth into unorganized space. This material is still shooting outward to fill what we know as the material realm.

When we observe creation we do so seeing only one side of the event. It seems reasonable that this manifestation of divine energy would look like what our scientists explain as big bang.

We come from God and God is within us, but we exist outside of the realm where our Creator resides. The stuff of which we are made comes from the First Source, but we are not source-like: the atoms of creation came from perfection, but the universe is not perfect. The material and the spiritual are separate – two distinct domains.

Stuff from the material cannot reside in the spiritual. The spiritual though, can enter the material: the presence of God within us is perfect, does come from the original source, and will guide us to our Creator as we become more like the divine.

As we grow in perfection, God grows. Evolution continues, for those perfect as well as those not: to stop growing is to die. Our existence is not only for us, but to also serve as an experiential event for God. When this space known as the material realm becomes perfected, as is the spiritual, it becomes one with it: all is assimilated and God increases in scope.

On millions upon millions of worlds there are trillions upon trillions of mortals being born, each one a potential new soul. Our relationship with God allows each of us to be both portals through which our Creator’s love can flow into our universe, and focal points for God to experience creation. In this way the loop is complete: the greatest is intimately tied to the least and no others can intervene.

The task of organizing this matter into the universes of time and space was delegated to the creator siblings. Of God and one with God, each is distinct from God. They come forth from the spiritual realm, muster the material of space, and create the celestial hierarchy to administer their universes.

These divine children are, for all intents and purposes, the Gods of their particular space. Worship – loving communion with our Creator when no request is involved – should be reserved for God. It is from God that we all have the opportunity for eternal life. Prayer, a spiritual request of some sort, should be sent to the sovereign of the universe: for us, that is Jesus Christ.

In the process of bringing a universe to completion, these creator children are required to incarnate several times into various orders of beings within their celestial hierarchy. This is required to gain full sovereignty over their domains: they are expected to know their universe, as do those inhabiting it. One reason Christ came to our world was to complete this series of incarnations, this time as a mortal.

How Christ could incarnate as a babe on a world of time and space is a mystery to even those above. Not everything of God is known. But what we do know is that nothing unusual occurred with the birth of Christ: Mary conceived in the normal fashion.

Virgin birth stories were common in the ancient world. They promote the idea that women are impure – that either having sex with them, or passing through their vaginal canal, is something that degrades the spiritual worth of a man or god.

Gender is a part of this plane, but no other. Neither God nor any in the celestial hierarchy should be referred to as male or female. Christ incarnated as a man because of the era in which he came, not because men are in any way superior to women. He had to bring his message forth from within the existing social structure, and this would have been much more difficult for him to do as a woman.

God makes no distinction based on gender. To allow ideas of male superiority to remain in our scriptures means to perpetuate them – that at some level we accept them as valid. Men have kept these institutions in place, but women also have responsibility. What would bring about change more quickly than our sisters just refusing to participate in groups that do not recognize their absolute equality?

The person we know as Jesus Christ was both a son of humanity and a Son of God. For us to interact with this level of being he needed to reduce himself to our level – to become material. Christ said that those who have seen him have witnessed our Creator, but he did not say that he was God.

The idea that Christ was sent here to die for humanity’s sins extends the ancient Jewish sacrificial system. Once again, humans built God in their image. The idea that our Creator would send its beloved child to be killed for our sake is abhorrent to many people, and nothing has hindered the spreading of the gospel of Christ more than this idea. Crucifying Christ did not meet the divine criteria of eternal truth, divine beauty, and infinite goodness.

It was God’s will that Christ live out his life in the flesh to demonstrate the love of our Creator and the siblinghood of humanity: he was to do this without using his divine powers if at all possible. It was his to exemplify adherence to God’s will: we are to have faith, not to expect the outward show of miracles. The inability of the people living then to understand the message he brought reflects their failings, not his, God’s, or humanity’s.

We are expected to grow into our spiritual status: we can be taught, but not forced to learn. Christ had nothing to fear from us, and did not. He carried out God’s will allowing others to make their own choices. While people killed Christ, to think that we, the finite, could ever hurt Christ, the eternal, is the height of arrogance.

Christ brought us the assurance of the parenthood of God and the subsequent siblinghood of humanity. He taught that the kingdom of God was within each of us. He lived a life of peace, tolerance, and patience. While at one time he told the apostles to love others as they loved themselves – the sixth level of the famous Golden Rule – he later stated that this was not even enough: they were commanded to love others as God would have them love the person.

Regardless of how we wish to be treated, or how the other is acting, we are supposed to base our relationships in love. If someone wishes to harm us or those we have the ability to help, we use that force necessary to stop them and nothing more.

Judgment and any punishment must only come from those officials our society as a whole has delegated to that task. As individuals, we are to treat others with tolerance, patience, compassion, and good will: no longer can anger, revenge, or retribution be considered appropriate.

Christ is known to have said that the way to our Creator is through him. He was present on the planet and speaking in person to those considering his message. What we think is plain may not be. For people of later generations, especially those educated in the intrigue, contradictions, and horrible acts attributed to almost all religions, it does not seem fair that we have to choose the right faith to reach God.

If this were the case, then only those who choose Christianity would receive eternal life, yet even within this faith there is dissention about who will be saved. To believe one way is the only way is to believe everyone else is wrong. This means we think God sees other people as less than us, a tactic that has been used to justify almost every war.

Christ wanted us to first worship God, and this happens in many different ways. Yes, it is presented that he was the one delegated to create us, and if true, then it is obvious that a soul goes through Christ to reach our mutual parent. This does not mean, though, that a human being must understand all of this now: given the confusion on this planet that would be absurd. Our universe is fair: different cultures require their own ways of belief.

When we come to the point of decision after death we are more cognizant of our surroundings. We have knowledge of our afterlife, not just belief in it. Nothing is more important than our worship of God, including our acceptance during mortal life of the divine nature of Christ. To say otherwise is to place the lesser before the greater.

Believing in God must come first: this keeps a person’s soul safe. When God is understood as perfect truth, beauty, and goodness, it keeps our world safe. This is happening in almost all religions. Fine-tuning our understanding of everything else can, and does, happen later.

This is the only way we can promote the equality of all faiths under a single sovereign Creator – the understanding that no religion is superior to any other. None of us has perfect knowledge of God: all of our teachings, including this one, have errors, but most of these ways also contain some truth. Our hope requires us to embrace those higher concepts that bring us closer, and to sever those ideas fueling antagonisms from the past.

Three days after being crucified, Christ ascended. He then reappeared in a series of visitations to various groups of people. He did not show himself in a resurrected material body. That was disposed of by the angels tasked to that duty, for no other reason than they did not want to witness the decomposition of their Creator’s body: his death was enough.

During his one life in the flesh Christ achieved that oneness of soul where the material melds with the spiritual – he showed us the perfection of life in this sphere. When he reappeared to speak with his followers, it was in the bodies of the morontia realm. Each time they saw him, he was a little different: finer in composition, more spiritual than material, and more difficult for the people to discern. During this period Christ traversed all of the same levels of attainment that we will: in all ways this creator child was tried as we are.

Christ did say that he would return to our planet some day: he did not say when this would be. Never did Christ connect his return to ideas about the end of the world. Yet, both Islam and Christianity claim that this Prince of Peace – divine love manifested into human form with never a mean word attributed to him – will return to lead them to victory in the final battle against the other. This leaves our world in a dangerous position.

There is no fight between good and evil: these are manifestations of our imperfect selves. There is that of God, and that not: the more of one, the less of the other. There is an inverse relationship between the amount of evil that can be present and the level of divinity in any situation.

We cannot fight against evil because evil is defined as an absence of God. To do so decreases even further God’s presence – resistance uses traits not of the divine, but of us. This is like throwing gasoline on a fire and with similar results: we become consumed by the inferno of emotions driving our conduct. When the tools of fear such as anger, violence, and greed are used to achieve something, they remain the essence of it.

To reduce evil in our world we need to increase the presence of what we know to be of God – eternal truth, divine beauty, and infinite goodness. Using love – demonstrated as patience, compassion, and fairness – we will negotiate our way to a better world one decision at a time. We remain focused in the present, not allowing our past to destroy us, nor our future to overwhelm us. What was idealism before now becomes reality.

No outside force opposes God. When a universe is brought to perfection, God’s presence is unified throughout the entire creation. Anything less than this means the universe is imperfect – that it has pockets of space where God’s presence is less than total. These gaps in the whole – areas where the perfection of God is lacking – are what we call evil.

Absolute evil is a complete lack of God’s presence: everything else is relative. Absence of God is a void, one that can only be filled with love: anything else present signifies a lack of it. To know this is to understand the key to forgiveness.

Not all minds develop the ability to discern right from wrong: this is different than intelligence. These minds never become invested with God’s presence because they have never shown the capacity to do divine will. Upon death these energy patterns dissipate, as would an animal’s, but while functioning on Earth they may have been responsible for some of humanity’s most heinous episodes.

Those entities known as the devil, Lucifer, Satan, and Beelzebub all existed: whether or not they still do is open for debate. These were created beings within the celestial hierarchy administering our universe who went into rebellion. Everywhere free choice of will reigns supreme: the ability to choose God’s way means we also have the capacity to do otherwise.

The rebellion led by Lucifer included the spiritual being overseeing the evolution of our planet. This entity is the one that became known as the devil. This fallen child of light cannot influence us unless we wish it to. None of those who were part of the rebellion are now causing us our problems.

Even with the possibility of one of our celestial leaders going astray, we have the assurance of divine guidance through the portion of God within us. The beings administering our universe are created entities that are born knowing God exists: they believe because they know. Being imperfect themselves, some have rebelled and misguided those under their charge.

Does it seem fair that we who must proceed on faith would not be given a means to determine what is not correct? Mortals are born on the material worlds without proof of God’s existence. Instead, God is in us, and through the exhibition of faith, we advance that relationship. While others, whether human or not, may use better reasoning to sway our thoughts, we can use the intuitive impulse of our Creator within to steer us clear of danger.

The celestial overseers of many other planets were also part of the rebellion. This disunity – a challenge to God’s will – reduced the presence of Deity within the greater universe: always, the degree of God present is based upon the level of acceptance of divine will. Because of the negative effect this group of planets had on the rest of our creation, the worlds involved were placed into spiritual quarantine. Our actions could not be allowed to harm the rest of the universe.

This spiritual isolation drew our world into the state of confusion we know as our collective history. Throughout this time periodic revelations have been made to help us maintain the concept of monotheism – the understanding that there is only one ultimate creator deity rather than many gods competing for our loyalty. The Urantia revelation was the last of these attempts.

We were told that we were entering into an era of materialism that would threaten our existence: we can see this now. Christ said that his gospel would lead the world to peace, but also that it would be a long time in coming. Our helpers say our world will find the spiritual era, but not when. Accomplishing this is our responsibility: how are we going to redirect the momentum driving us to destruction?

Foremost is for more people to understand that God is a loving creator parent, one under which all religions are equal. Our transformation from fear to love is a process, not an event: as we refine how we believe in God, we change how we act. Love is not taught, but experienced: it is self-perpetuating – the more put forth in the world, the more we receive back. This provides us the sustenance for change.

Ideas of nationalism must cease: no longer can nation states possess the unbridled right to wage war. The only fair way to exist peacefully is through a global representative democracy constrained by a universal declaration of human rights. Everyone in the world has the same right to the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that has been championed by the United States.

As people have learned to give greater loyalty to their nation than their local community, so must we now grow into world citizenship. We can all remain unique cultures, but at some level we must also recognize the greater global family of which we are a part. Hopes of regaining past glories must end: it is time for us to unify in the present. Issues such as poverty, starvation, and over population are localized events resulting from unequal representation on the global stage.

Understood today is the devastating influence of corporate greed. Business has bought all political leaders: to remain elected they must bow to their donor’s will. Non-state actors – economic organizations outside of the voting process – dictate policy to our world’s governments: a few benefits at the expense of the many. We have always known our answers can be found at the end of the money trail, but do we have the courage now to challenge what we find?

Pure capitalism is a beast of ever increasing efficiency: it must continue to grow to survive. It is an economic system, not a way of being: its goal is profit, not an enhanced life. Its laws are finite, not eternal. When uncaged, it runs like an engine without a governor, going faster and faster until it melts down.

Our world only has so many resources – at some point this monster will run out of fuel and begin to consume itself. We do not have the right, though, to steal our world from future generations. Profit is not progress, per se, and neither one should be placed before people or the planet. Doing so puts the desires of a few over the needs of the rest. Competition has its place, but only within certain bounds.

Pure democracy does not work: it means 51% of the people can dictate life to the other 49%. The only fair way is to constrain democracy with a bill of rights that protects individual freedoms from the collective will. Capitalism also requires similar controls. Competition and free market theory need parameters that limit a corporation’s quest for profit: left to themselves they have destroyed much of our planet.

The collective welfare of humanity and the effect on the local community where business happens must come first. This requires that corporate rights be reduced to less than those of any of the world’s citizens: the least of us is more important than any company’s desire for profit.

To achieve global peace – that point where war is abolished as a means to an end – requires that women share equally in the decision making process, from raising the family to managing our planet. So far, men have made most decisions of import: the chaos on the world is our doing. It is time we accept this responsibility and offer our sisters equal representation at the table.

Christ made no differentiation between the spiritual worth of men and women: all are considered equal under God’s eyes. Jesus was specific in this teaching, and he had many women involved in his ministry. After the crucifixion church founders reverted to their old ways and took back from women their newly found freedom. Change comes slowly, especially when it means one group has to relinquish power held over another.

Men and women are two sides of the same race. For peace, both must participate equally. This requires that greater consideration – opportunity – be offered to those marginalized now until the transition to balance is achieved.

These approaches are more easily discussed than accomplished. They require us to release the institutions of the past – ways based in fear – and create a new existence, one of love. This means those controlling the world now – or others like them – will not do so in the future. They will though, fight to survive.

Love inspires, fear destroys: positive actions must replace negative reactions. Only love can generate the passionate intensity we need to survive this journey. Tolerance, forgiveness, and community need to be taught, then experienced, and finally adopted. Patience will be required.

The vision for the next generation must be lived: we need to demonstrate that of which we speak. Those seeking positive change should unify themselves: competition is the way of fear, cooperation the way of love. Never before has the world had the chance it does today. How though, do we apply these principles and use this window of opportunity to offer a new era of global leadership?