I have two cats. When it is dinner time, they line up before the two bowls – Emmett on the left and Merlin on the right. They follow this routine twice a day, eating politely side by side. But every once in a while, Emmett gets to the food first and eats out of both dishes. The other day he switched dishes right before Merlin showed up and blocked both of them. I had to shove the big cat aside in order to give Merlin access to his dish. You see, they don’t share with each other. They may appear to do so, but they only tolerate each other’s presence in order to satisfy their own appetites. But if they could, they would gorge themselves at the expense of the other. They don’t have the concept that we learned when we were little, sharing. They’re just cats, you see. They don’t know any better.
We know better. We know because we learn from God how to build relationships through sharing. God has provided the means with which we grow in our love and caring for each other. Strangely enough this simple idea has answered a complicated question that I have been wrestling with. The question of why God has seemingly subdivided Godself. Why is there God the Trinity, or God the Sevenfold? Why is Michael of Nebadon divine? Why and how can there be so many Gods – or maybe it is better to ask why is there so many aspects of God? I can understand the concept of “The Lord your God is one” and the “I Am”. But God the endlessly multiplying is very confusing.
Sharing to the rescue. The Urantia Book gives a marvelous answer to this dilemma. It says that God created a “policy of profound self-distribution” (108:4). God delegates whatever he/she can to others. And that God shares “divinity, personality and reality” with the vast universe (109:3). It says God does this to avoid becoming a monolithic God (108:1). God sitting high, lofty, and distant on a throne surveying the creation. Instead of that distant and unapproachable God we have a God who shares divinity throughout the cosmos. Think about this – God shares!
God shares even with us, in order to develop an everlasting relationship. We can see this and understand it. We can discern God on all levels of development (645:2). Lowly beings like us have been given a personalized fragment of divinity, the Thought Adjuster (3:8). We can approach God through personal spiritual experience as well as superpersonal beings like Jesus of Nazareth. And as we grow in our relationship with God we will be able to discern loftier levels of deity; God the Sevenfold – a deity personalization that makes God approachable for us ascenders (11:5). And at the highest levels of reality, God is in relationship with God. Not a solitary all powerful force, but a being with others existing in a unified relationship that is the ultimate community (644:3). Community is something we can understand. We can understand the God who exemplifies existence within a unified, supportive, caring relationship. We can identify with God who shares all that he/she can with a universe of creatures – even creatures who are farthest away from understanding.
We don’t have to be like cats, living for ourselves. We can be like God – living and sharing in community with others. We can experience something of God in our supportive relationships with our fellow sojourners – because God is in a supportive relationship with his creation. We can know a little about God because God has shared Godself with us. And of course we can strive to be like God by giving of ourselves to others. “Be ye perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect” – Amen.
God bless you,
William Whitehead
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