Person of God

A couple of years ago I finally hooked up with a man I had wanted to speak to for a long time. It took me a while because I am basically lazy. I knew how to reach him – I was just dragging my feet. I’m glad I talked with him though, because Clifford is one of the most influential people in my life. He was my youth leader at the church where I grew up. And he personified living the life of Jesus for me during my teenage years. Cliff lived up to the highest human ideals of any person that I have ever met. And his kindness and love for me and my friends is still with me to this day. I think about him and I think that God must be something like this man. Even though I know that God is so much more than any human could ever be, the love that I have witnessed helps me to understand a little of God’s love for me. When I consider our Universal Father I think of him/her as a person. I think of someone with a personality that I can relate to and have a relationship with. But then the question is, when we say God is a person what exactly does that mean?

One way of answering that question is to realize that we think of God as a person because we experience God as a person. We can understand God through direct experience with God’s personality. The Urantia book says that we have within us a fragment of God, a direct spiritual link to the Father (26.5). Though the Thought Adjuster is not God, we have contact with the Father through the Adjuster (25.6). Therefore we have a direct way of contacting and interacting with the personality of God. We have within ourselves a fragment of God that enables us to have a relationship with him/her. Like any relationship this is one of mutual choice. I can’t force someone to like me. I can’t make someone confide in me their inner thoughts and desires. Only those with the “faith-vision of the spiritualized mind” can truly experience God’s presence (25.3). Only those who want a relationship with God will develop one. One of the reasons that this is so difficult to talk about is because those who choose not to know the person of God lack the faith-vision to understand those who do. And the people who do choose have differing levels of understanding because God reveals Godself to our level of comprehension (27.2). One can’t fill a container more than it can hold – even God can’t make someone understand more than they are able. But God promises that as we grow in spiritual comprehension God will reveal more and more of Godself to us. And that means we will increase our understanding of the personality of God.

This still doesn’t fully answer the original question. The problem is that the personality of God is a mystery. God reveals as much of Godself as a creature can understand, but God’s eternity of perfection makes totally understanding the personality of God forever a mystery (26.3). Making things more difficult for us is God’s spirit nature. God establishes a relationship with us through cosmic spiritual forces which cannot be measured but can be experienced. People of faith know of God’s presence, but attempts to provide a rational proof fail (27.3). We are left with our own observations of human personality in order to understand a little of God’s personality. Humans are a shadow of the divine – we are a vague image of the eternal one (29.7). But we don’t have to settle for basic human concepts to reach for an understanding of the divine. God makes him/herself known in many ways. We can understand God through our Thought Adjusters, through the ever present Universal Spirit and in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. After all, Jesus said when you see me you see God. There are many ways that we can approach the mystery of God’s personality.

Finally The Urantia Book says that God is the “highest ideals and loftiest goals of humanity” (27.5). To me this means that everything we strive for; everything good, everything worthy, everything true is encompassed in our understanding of God. God is “idealized reality” – our greatest goals made real. God is “universe personalized” – a creation that cares. God is “the supreme desire of people” – the goals our yearning hearts long to reach. God is the “power potential of righteousness” – the universe changing power of doing that which is right (23.6). Everything we think of as good and beautiful and true – God is all of that and more since God can’t be anything less (27.5). God is what we humans have always searched for; universal perfection is the greatest goal of humanity.

After all is said and done the best way of understanding this concept is this simple statement – God is a person because “only a person can love and be loved” (31.3). People of faith know this to be true because we have personally experienced the love of our heavenly Father. People who lack faith will not understand. Personalities develop relationships – God offers the ultimate relationship. Anyone who seeks after this relationship will truly know the person and the love of God. It’s that simple. I am surrounded by people and I know they are persons because of the relationships I have with them and the love I experience in their presence. The Universal Father offers me this and much more.

God Bless You,

William Whitehead