The enlightened worlds all recognize and worship the Universal Father, the eternal maker and infinite upholder of all creation. The will creatures of universe upon universe have embarked upon the long, long Paradise journey, the fascinating struggle of the eternal adventure of attaining God the Father. The transcendent goal of the children of time is to find the eternal God, to comprehend the divine nature, to recognize the Universal Father. God-knowing creatures have only one supreme ambition, just one consuming desire, and that is to become, as they are in their spheres, like him as he is in his Paradise perfection of personality and in his universal sphere of righteous supremacy. From the Universal Father who inhabits eternity there has gone forth the supreme mandate, “Be you perfect, even as I am perfect”. In love and mercy the messengers of Paradise have carried this divine exhortation down through the ages and out through the universes, even to such lowly animal-origin creatures as the human races of Urantia.
1:0.3 (21.3)
This magnificent and universal injunction to strive for the attainment of the perfection of divinity is the first duty, and should be the highest ambition, of all the struggling creature creation of the God of perfection. This possibility of the attainment of divine perfection is the final and certain destiny of all man’s eternal spiritual progress.
1:0.4 (22.1)
The Decalogue is the foundation of the Christian faith and at the same times the teachings of the Catholic Church. You don’t have to do much research to notice that some form of life guidance is proclaimed by virtually all religions. As a religious work, The Urantia Book is no exception. However, the messages touch on the divine commandments from a slightly different perspective. This is the clou of this material. Before I talk about the Decalogue seen through the prism of the book, I will share my own conclusions from reflections on the Ten Commandments, in the context of the most popular Christian trend in Poland – Catholicism.
As always
The Catholic Church knows best. I do not intend to deny the universal tenor of the Ten Commandments, but rather to emphasize the arrogant attitude of the institution. I cannot call it otherwise – the representatives of the Church with exceptional lightness place themselves in the role of not the only authorized, but also infallible interpreters of the Bible, and therefore also of the Decalogue. The evangelizing mission of the Church (as well as other sects) is based on fear, so it lies on the foundations of sin. In fact, focus on punishments for disobedience.
To start from the root of the problem, I would like to remind you that the Catholic Church constantly instills in the minds of the faithful the conviction that the Church is the God itself. This process begins with the child. One of the first must-haves I remember from religion lessons was to learn the Ten Commandments by heart. It is not necessary to reflect on their message – after all, observing the commandments takes place under the dictation of the priest. I have already spoken here several times about the sign of equality between the institution of the Church and God. On this occasion, it is very clear.
The Creator entrusted the commandments to all mankind. But it is only the hierarchy of the Church that has the right to arbitrarily decide how it is to be understood; and, more importantly, a monopoly on knowing how (others) are to obey it in their daily lives. All this is done to allow us to avoid punishment, the most terrible punishment, because it is divine, a punishment whose form is determined by none other than God himself. That is, the Church. Such manipulation will discredit any whiner. If someone doubts whether, horror of horrors, he does not believe in the message or intentions of the Church, he will find out that he is opposing the Creator. And that he would bear the consequences for it.
The paraphrased first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” in the heart of a godly Catholic, cannot be anything other than “Thou shalt believe unconditionally in everything that the priest says.” And when every word of the Church appears as the voice of God, even the slightest insubordination can turn out to be a violation of the first commandment. There is only one God, so only one Church. Just as holy. Therefore, when the people of the Church demand the same honor and respect due to the Creator and then receive it, there can be no question of violating the first commandment. How could God punish Himself for this?
Before I sat down to work on this material, I planned to look at the Decalogue also through the prism of the catechism of the Catholic Church – after all, this is where we should look for the sources of the Church’s position. However, not only the attitudes of the associates, but also the priests themselves, are so far from what was written there that I considered it pointless.
Let the second commandment, “Thou shalt not mention the name of thy God in vain,” serve as an example here. Also in the context of the above, but more bluntly, when a sentence like “God will punish you”, “you insult God”, “God wanted it so”, or other “why are you doing this to me, God?” or “God is my witness”, has become the everyday life of an average Catholic. The zenith in this area is the replacement of the universal, yet sinful “oh fuck!” with the Christian and holy equivalent of “oh my God!”
Despite the diplomas, I do not feel in any way a member of the Church community. Therefore, I cannot objectively express my opinion on the current, internal Church teachings. However, media messages, as well as the attitudes of the more zealous believers or the clergy themselves, do not confirm the clichés that the members are heading towards the ideals of the catechism. When the catechism of the Catholic Church is imperceptibly given a rank superior to the Bible, and then pretends that the Church and its sheep live in harmony with it, it sounds rather like a tasteless joke.
At the height of the Church’s insolence lies the dehumanization of non-believers (in God, that is of course, in the Church and to the Church) as those devoid of morality. After all, they rejected God (the Church!), so the Decalogue does not apply to them. As if in practice they not only did not want to, but were also unable to comply with it. I have already touched on this topic when I wrote about conscience. I still do not believe that priests can proclaim that without God (read: without the Church) man gets rid of human reflexes. Because if it were not for the Church, we would not know that murdering is not cool and we would throw our parents into garbage chutes as soon as they are no longer useful.
Of course, such views cannot be proclaimed to everyone. Priests with their backs to the wall will always hide behind the catechism, which functions only in theory. Radicals usually speak about it out loud. It does not change the fact that such extremists, first of all are representatives of the Church, whom the leadership mercifully does not temper, but what is more important, they have an influence on the people who are obsessed with them. Thanks to this position, the members have another reason to feel superior. No wonder that the rest of society may feel the need to defend themselves against such hideous marginalization.
Non-religious commandments (4-10) are so obvious today in civilization that taking the credit for maintaining their sound in human consciousness is simply indecent. The Church is plotting as much as it can to keep the faithful in delusion. For when one day his sacred service is gone, we will all return to the trees.
I do not deny that primitive people may have needed prohibitions to mature (although I doubt that members of the early tribes agreed to kill their fellows or steal because the shaman did not tell them that they were not allowed to do so). It is more likely that evolution and true religion, aided by revelation, slowly but steadily develop our morality; not appropriated, and then modified and interpreted according to the needs of the Church.
I will end this argument with an interpretation of the third commandment, “Remember to keep the holy day holy”. It should be understood more or less as follows: “On the days indicated by the priest, you must do what he has ordered, go where he has commanded; there to listen to him and humbly take for granted everything he says”. How else?
The Father’s Way
As we learn from The Urantia Book, the evolution of all inhabited worlds is quite similar. And when evolving man has developed the ability to make moral choices (free will), the messenger of the creator of the local universe, the Planetary Prince, arrives on the planet. In our case (probably because the Earth is the habitat of experimental life) this did not happen until 500,000 years later. But at last, about one-half million years ago, the Planetary Prince, Caligastia, came to Urantia. At that time, there were less than 500 million primitive human beings in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
This is not the place for a detailed description of the Prince’s work. For the purposes of this material, however, it is important that this new ruler inspires primitive people to further development; not only religious. And that’s exactly how it was (at least for a while) in our land.
It was the Prince Caligastia (specifically Hap, one of his assistants) first introduced the moral law to the ancient peoples of Earth. It should be remembered that this took place hundreds of thousands of years ago — the man of that time was only a step higher on the scale of evolution than his animal ancestors; probably today we would still call such a man an animal.
This law, known as the “Father’s Way,” consisted of seven commandments:
1. You shall not fear nor serve any God but the Father of all.
66:7.9 (751.4)
2. You shall not disobey the Father’s Son, the world’s ruler, nor show disrespect to his superhuman associates.
66:7.10 (751.5)
3. You shall not speak a lie when called before the judges of the people.
66:7.11 (751.6)
4. Thou shalt not kill men, women, or children.
66:7.12 (751.7)
5. You shall not steal your neighbor’s goods or his cattle.
66:7.13 (751.8)
6. You shall not touch your friend’s wife.
66:7.14 (751.9)
7. You shall not show disrespect to your parents or the elders of the tribe.
66:7.15 (751.10)
In order to perpetuate the “Father’s way,” the Prince’s staff established the custom of dedicating the commandments to particular days of the week and using them as greetings or thanksgiving at meals.
Centuries later, Adam and Eve’s law of Eden differed little from these seven commandments. The Material Son and Daughter, however, taught additional reasons for observing them. For example: The indwelling Thought Adjusters, fragments of God, have become another justification not to take the life of another person.
The effects of the rebellion left a great mark on us. Although even after the fall of Eden, the commandments of “the Father’s Way” remained largely unchanged, people continued to have a tendency to mythologize their beliefs. The ancestors of the Assyrians taught that the moral laws contained in the commandments of the Gods were revealed to their religious leader, Van, on the holy Mount Ararat. There are not many differences here when we remember the biblical records about Moses, who was to receive the Decalogue on Mount Sinai; this is still considered a saint by many today. Mountain peaks touching the heavens will probably be associated with the vestibule of God’s dwelling for a long time. Olympus seems to be an equally adequate comparison.
Relief
An important element shaping the content of the commandments was the taboo. For our (not-so) ancient ancestors, who knew only evolutionary religion, the observance of taboos was a protection from bad luck and prevented offending spirits; Contrary to appearances however, in its beginnings it was not religious at all. However, it quickly gained the approval of demons and spirits. It is the taboo that is the father of rites and the mother of the broadly understood priesthood. The taboo is the progenitor of primitive self-control and constituted the earliest form of social regulation. For a long time, the only one.
The respect which these prohibitions commanded in the mind of the savage exactly equaled his fear of the powers who were supposed to enforce them. Taboos first arose because of chance experience with ill luck; later they were proposed by chiefs and shamans—fetish men who were thought to be directed by a spirit ghost, even by a god. The fear of spirit retribution is so great in the mind of a primitive that he sometimes dies of fright when he has violated a taboo, and this dramatic episode enormously strengthens the hold of the taboo on the minds of the survivors.
89:1.2 (974.4)
The earliest taboos included, for example, restrictions on reaching for other people’s women or property. Do you see where this story is going? When religion finally came to have some meaning in the lives of the ancients, what was forbidden became unclean; impious. To this day, we are struggling with such tendencies. The seven commandments of the Planetary Prince and Eden, as well as the later commandments of the Hebrews, were just such taboo. Hence their prohibitive form. Paradoxically, however, such revealed rights of people did not limit but liberated. Thousands of pre-existent taboos almost entirely dominated the lives of primitive peoples. It was a time when even the most trivial activities of everyday life had to be subordinated to them. Today we could compare it to severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. We were puppets — slaves to superstition and taboos. These few commandments had to bring relief.
Machiventa Melchizedek
A critical Son of Nebadon (now vicegerent Planetary Prince of Urantia) initiated the third revelation of truth on earth, after the Planetary Prince and Adam and Eve. Machiventa Melchizedek taught trust in the almighty goodness of one God. He proclaimed that man gains God’s grace only through faith. The assembled group of followers, believers, and disciples around him formed the nucleus of the community of Salem. Machiventa became known throughout Palestine as a priest of El Elyon, the Most High, and as the sage of Salem.
Machiventa taught on Earth for 94 years. One of his leading disciples, and later his main support, was Abraham. Melchizedek lived with the Katro family for 30 years, and they were able to learn many higher truths than those which he had universally proclaimed. I mention this because the Katro kept these teachings in their family for a long time. Right down to the time of their descendant, Moses.
The Salem religious ceremonies were comparatively simple. Everyone who joined the Melchizedek Church memorized and accepted the following provisions:
1. I believe in El Elyon, the Most High God, the only Universal Father and Creator of all things.
93:4.2 (1017.4)
2. I accept the Melchizedek covenant with the Most High, which bestows the favor of God on my faith, not on sacrifices and burnt offerings.
93:4.3 (1017.5)
3. I promise to obey the seven commandments of Melchizedek and to tell the good news of this covenant with the Most High to all men.
93:4.4 (1017.6)
Of the seven commandments of the Salem religion there is clearly resounding both the ancient “Father’s Way” and the commandments of the days of Eden.
1. You shall serve no God except the Most High Creator of heaven and earth.
93:4.7 (1017.9)
2. You shall not doubt that faith is the only requirement for eternal salvation.
93:4.8 (1017.10)
3. You shall not bear false witness.
93:4.9 (1017.11)
4. You shall not kill.
93:4.10 (1017.12)
5. You shall not steal.
93:4.11 (1017.13)
6. You shall not commit adultery.
93:4.12 (1018.1)
7. You will not show disrespect for your parents and elders.
93:4.13 (1018.2)
The Moses Law
The Urantia Book leaves no illusions. Moses did not receive the commandments directly from God in the midst of the spectacular follies of nature. Of course, this remarkable biblical story captures the imagination, and the supernatural splendor undoubtedly contributes to its spread. Such is human nature — ordinary things are boring; and when we talk about religion, it is not very credible.
Many of the advances which Moses made over and above the religion of the Egyptians and the surrounding Levantine tribes were due to the Kenite traditions of the time of Melchizedek. Without the teaching of Machiventa to Abraham and his contemporaries, the Hebrews would have come out of Egypt in hopeless darkness. Moses and his father-in-law, Jethro, gathered up the residue of the traditions of the days of Melchizedek, and these teachings, joined to the learning of the Egyptians, guided Moses in the creation of the improved religion and ritual of the Israelites. Moses was an organizer; he selected the best in the religion and mores of Egypt and Palestine and, associating these practices with the traditions of the Melchizedek teachings, organized the Hebrew ceremonial system of worship.
96:5.3 (1058.1)
Let us consider which version of events will move the timid man more forcefully:
The one in which God first announced to a small group the plan of his imminent arrival. He instructed their leader to go with the chosen ones to the foot of the mountain, where “a thick cloud spread over the mountain, and the sound of a mighty trumpet was heard, so that all the people in the camp trembled with fear”. Then, in the form of such a cloud, the Creator personally descended from heaven to impart the most important law of all mankind, the Ten Commandments, to the leader who was reaching the summit.
Or is it the one in which Moses, during contemplation, in accordance with his subjective understanding of religion and the best intentions, decides to update the well-known 7 commandments of Melchizedek? Almost the same as those handed down to the first humans’ centuries earlier by the staff of the Planetary Prince…
Which of these stories is more divine and exciting? Which one is more likely to be talk about? Which of these two Moses’ will a person be more likely to follow?
In the context of the Ten Commandments, The Urantia Book says, among others, the story of Moses:
“Moses had heard of the teachings of Machiventa Melchizedek from both his father and his mother … He was educated as El Shaddaist; Under the influence of his father-in-law, he became an Elzionist; and by the time of setting up the Hebrew encampment at Mount Sinai after the flight from Egypt, he had formulated a new and enlarged concept of Deity (derived from all of his earlier beliefs), which he wisely chose to proclaim to his people as an enlarged concept of their old tribal god, Yahweh. Moses tried to teach these Bedouins the idea of El Elyon […] so he deliberately decided to compromise on their tribal god of the desert as the one and only god of his followers. The fact that Yahweh was the god of the fleeing Hebrews explains why they remained under the holy Mount Sinai for so long and why there they received the Ten Commandments that Moses proclaimed in the name of Yahweh, the god of Horeb. During this long sojourn at Sinai the religious ceremonies of the newly growing Hebrew cult were further perfected. It did not appear that Moses could ever have succeeded in initiating any of the more advanced ceremonial worship and in keeping his followers in a group for a quarter of a century had it not been for the violent eruption of Horeb during the third week of his worshipful sojourn at its foothills. In the light of this cataclysm, it is not surprising that Moses was able to teach his brothers that their God was “mighty, fearful, fire-absorbing, terrible, and almighty”.
As yourself
By descending to earth and living as Jesus of Nazareth, Paradise Michael, the universe ruler of Nebadon, once again enlarged the concept of the Universal Father to the evolving races. Contrary to Catholic beliefs, he did not leave behind divine law; this was not the path of revelation he had chosen. But he knew, as did the earlier teachers of truth, that in order for a man to begin to build the new, he must feel secure on the foundations of the old. Revolution will not replace the divine plan of evolution.
And with this consciousness he taught throughout his entire bestowal mission. Jesus explained the gradual progress of true religion, by the example of the commandments, to the apostles as follows:
Again should you have discerned the growth of the understanding of divine law in perfect keeping with these enlarging concepts of divinity. When the children of Israel came out of Egypt in the days before the enlarged revelation of Yahweh, they had ten commandments which served as their law right up to the times when they were encamped before Sinai. And these ten commandments were:
142:3.10 (1599.2)
1. You shall not worship another god, for the Lord is a jealous God.
142:3.11 (1599.3)
2. You shall not make molten gods.
142:3.12 (1599.4)
3. You shall not neglect to keep the feast of unleavened bread.
142:3.13 (1599.5)
4. Of all the males of men or cattle, the first-born are mine, says the Lord.
142:3.14 (1599.6)
5. Six days you may work, but on the seventh day you shall rest.
142:3.15 (1599.7)
6. You shall not fail to observe the feast of the first fruits and the feast of the ingathering at the end of the year.
142:3.16 (1599.8)
7. You shall not offer the blood of any sacrifice with leavened bread.
142:3.17 (1599.9)
8. Do not leave the sacrifices of the Passover feast until the next morning.
142:3.18 (1599.10)
9. You shall bring the first of the first fruits of the earth into the house of the Lord your God.
142:3.19 (1599.11)
10. You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.
142:3.20 (1599.12)
And then, amidst the thunders and lightnings of Sinai, Moses gave them the new ten commandments, which you will all allow are more worthy utterances to accompany the enlarging Yahweh concepts of Deity. And did you never take notice of these commandments as twice recorded in the Scriptures, that in the first case deliverance from Egypt is assigned as the reason for Sabbath keeping, while in a later record the advancing religious beliefs of our forefathers demanded that this be changed to the recognition of the fact of creation as the reason for Sabbath observance?
142:3.21 (1599.13)
And then will you remember that once again — in the greater spiritual enlightenment of Isaiah’s day — these ten negative commandments were changed into the great and positive law of love, the injunction to love God supremely and your neighbor as yourself. And it is this supreme law of love for God and for man that I also declare to you as constituting the whole duty of man”.
142:3.22 (1599.14)
The apostles, like many believers today, were reluctant to face the truth, even as recorded in their holy books. Even preached by the Son of God. Sometimes they treated the new commandments only superficially. The Urantia Book says that “never before have the apostles been so shocked as when they heard this recital of the growth of the concept of God in the Jewish minds of previous generations; they were too stunned to ask questions”.
Jesus repeated the tone of the new commandments other times. Again to the Apostles:
You have been taught that you should ‘fear God and keep his commandments, for that is the whole duty of man.’ But I have come to give you a new and higher commandment. I would teach you to ‘love God and learn to do his will, for that is the highest privilege of the liberated sons of God.’ Your fathers were taught to ‘fear God — the Almighty King.’ I teach you, ‘Love God — the all-merciful Father.’
149:6.7 (1676.1)
But also to their opponents:
Then came forward one of the groups of the Pharisees to ask harassing questions, and the spokesman, signaling to Jesus, said: “Master, I am a lawyer, and I would like to ask you which, in your opinion, is the greatest commandment?” Jesus answered: “There is but one commandment, and that one is the greatest of all, and that commandment is: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second commandment is like this first; indeed, it springs directly there from, and it is: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these; on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets”.
174:4.2 (1901.2)
The Last Commandment
The pilgrim lands on the receiving planet of Havona, the pilot world of the seventh circuit, with only one endowment of perfection, perfection of purpose. The Universal Father has decreed: “Be you perfect, even as I am perfect”. That is the astounding invitation-command broadcast to the finite children of the worlds of space. The promulgation of that injunction has set all creation astir in the co-operative effort of the celestial beings to assist in bringing about the fulfillment and realization of that tremendous command of the First Great Source and Center.
26:4.12 (290.2)
The Urantia Book once again enlarges the concept of Deity. As before, this revelation is multi-layered. And just as then, it also touches on the commandments, narrowing their content and adding depth to them. All the past and possible future commandments come down and will come down to this, from the beginning, the only one: “Be you perfect, even as I am perfect.”
That God created man in His image does not mean that we are divine, nor that unreflective obedience to His self-appointed agents will somehow magically and suddenly impart divine qualities to us. However, we can become divine. We have a fragment of God Himself within us — the potential for infinite growth and an inner need to become better; so as to be like him. And we have an eternity to achieve it. We are allowed to listen to hints, all possible commandments on how to do it. But we will get there guided by true religion; and only so.
This is the true meaning of that divine command, “Be you perfect, even as I am perfect,” which ever urges mortal man onward and beckons him inward in that long and fascinating struggle for the attainment of higher and higher levels of spiritual values and true universe meanings. This sublime search for the God of universes is the supreme adventure of the inhabitants of all the worlds of time and space.
1:0.6 (22.3)
(Un) perfect
As the stories presented in The Urantia Book progress, it is easy to conclude that the commandments are not, and never have been, arbitrary divine law. Especially one whose violation will be punished; and compliance rewarded. I would rather call the commandments a revelatory method of civilizing man, by the evolutionary method. It is effective, but unfortunately just like God himself, plundered and disavowed by religious organizations.
At the beginning of our moral evolution, we needed an impulse that would in one way or another make us realize that killing another human being is not right. Consent. But today? Such prohibitions, from the social or moral side, seem completely unnecessary. Especially since the universality of the commandments is reflected in the provisions of the law – we all want to be better; not only followers. It is not an achievement of the Church that theft or rape is not universally accepted. From the broadest perspective, only God can be the source of morality. To create oneself as the sole moral authority is only arrogant. The development of morality is a system of communicating vessels, and its level is the merit of all of us. The Decalogue still suffers for human stubbornness; calculating priests are invariably a brake on progress (even religious progress!). In today’s religions, the commandments updated by Jesus are completely marginalized.
Against all odds, we are consistently and together getting better and better. More like God. There is still a long way to go, that’s true. But if we want, each of us can not only not kill or steal, but also love neighbor as ourselves; and ultimately become perfect. Even like God. The Urantia Book, in offering us this latest commandment, is another guidepost on this path.
I don’t know how to be perfect. If someone claims to know, they are lying. But I know how to get better — by honestly trying. And I think that’s the best start.
The test of time is almost over; the race for eternity has been all but run. The days of uncertainty are ending; the temptation to doubt is vanishing; the injunction to be perfect has been obeyed. From the very bottom of intelligent existence the creature of time and material personality has ascended the evolutionary spheres of space, thus proving the feasibility of the ascension plan while forever demonstrating the justice and righteousness of the command of the Universal Father to his lowly creatures of the worlds: “Be you perfect, even as I am perfect”.
26:9.3 (295.1)
P.S. Fetish
Let us go back to the days before Moses, centuries when the idea of a spirit penetrating into objects, game, or men, is a sacred belief. We have observed many taboos, but man, from the beginning of the evolution of religion, has also worshipped fetishes — objects which he thought possessed a spirit. Our ancestors had a tendency (or was it only their ancestors?) to transform everything that was extraordinary to them into religious fetishes. Patterned stones, plants, fruits (e.g. apples) or trees became fetishes; animals (e.g. a sacred cow), people (both geniuses and the disabled or handicapped), and even days of the week or numbers (e.g. 13); also fire and water (today called holy water). When I think about it, I think back to the image of a group of old women kneeling in front of a tree whose knot resemble the figure of Jesus.
For hundreds of years, people have been sincerely convinced that God dwells in holy shrines, temples, and stone altars. In fact, we are still not far from this type of beliefs (taking into account, for example, the attitude of Muslims to Hajar in Mecca or the more fervent Catholics to the first church building in Poland).
What does religious fetishism have to do with the commandments? If we get rid of the fairy-tale background from the biblical story of the Decalogue, we can better understand Moses, who, adding to the seven, another commandment, “You shall not make any graven image or any image of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or anything that is in the waters of this earth”, tried to limit the error of worshipping such fetishes. Nowadays, however, the temple-devotional business is too profitable to mention this type of unnecessary commandments. Therefore, the Catholic Church in its catechetical version of the Decalogue prudently removed them.
Words eventually became fetishes, more especially those which were regarded as God’s words; in this way the sacred books of many religions have become fetishistic prisons incarcerating the spiritual imagination of man. Moses’ very effort against fetishes became a supreme fetish; his commandment was later used to stultify art and to retard the enjoyment and adoration of the beautiful.
88:2.6 (969.4)