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Every human in
our world experiences moments of self-reflection, doubt and skepticism.
We search for answers that help us define God's role in our lives and
our relevance to the universe and beyond. These are not new questions.
The Urantia Book can be a valuable source of enlightenment and comfort
when a soul is faced with Life's Toughest Questions. Click on a question
you've struggled with and discover The Urantia Book's perspective on
some of life's most difficult and frequently-asked questions.
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Q: Why are we born? What is the purpose of living? Why am I living?
A: Thank you for your note to Truthbook.com,
a website dedicated to the teachings of The
Urantia Book.
I will answer your questions with Urantia Book quotes, and I hope you
will click on each link to expand these important ideas
We
are born to come to know and love God
as our spirit Father.
(1:0.2)
The myriads of planetary
systems were all made to be eventually inhabited by many different
types of intelligent creatures, beings who could know God, receive the
divine affection, and love him in return. The universe of universes is
the work of God and the dwelling place of his diverse creatures.
“God created the heavens and formed the earth; he established
the universe and created this world not in vain; he formed it to be
inhabited.”
(1:1.2)
The Universal
Father never imposes any form of arbitrary recognition, formal worship,
or slavish service upon the intelligent will creatures of the
universes. The evolutionary inhabitants of the worlds of time and space
must of themselves — in their own hearts —
recognize, love, and voluntarily worship him. The Creator refuses to
coerce or compel the submission of the spiritual free wills of his
material creatures. The affectionate dedication of the human will to
the doing of the Father’s will is man’s choicest
gift to God; in fact, such a consecration of creature will constitutes
man’s only possible gift of true value to the Paradise
Father. In God, man lives, moves, and has his being; there is nothing
which man can give to God except this choosing to abide by the
Father’s will, and such decisions, effected by the
intelligent will creatures of the universes, constitute the reality of
that true worship which is so satisfying to the love-dominated nature
of the Creator Father.
Our purpose
in life is to share and co-create our lives with God.
(108:0.2)
Nothing
in the entire universe can substitute for the fact of experience on
nonexistential levels. The infinite God is, as always, replete and
complete, infinitely inclusive of all things except evil and creature
experience. God cannot do wrong; he is infallible. God cannot
experientially know what he has never personally experienced; God's
preknowledge is existential. Therefore does the spirit of the Father
descend from Paradise to participate with finite mortals in every bona
fide experience of the ascending career; it is only by such a method
that the existential God could become in truth and in fact man's
experiential Father. The infinity of the eternal God encompasses the
potential for finite experience, which indeed becomes actual in the
ministry of the Adjuster fragments that actually share the life
vicissitude experiences of human beings.
(2:2.6)
God
is eternally and infinitely perfect; he cannot personally know
imperfection as his own experience, but he does share the consciousness
of all the experience of imperfectness of all the struggling creatures
of the evolutionary universes of all the Paradise Creator Sons. The
personal and liberating touch of the God of perfection overshadows the
hearts and encircuits the natures of all those mortal creatures who
have ascended to the universe level of moral discernment. In this
manner, as well as through the contacts of the divine presence, the
Universal Father actually participates in the experience with
immaturity and imperfection in the evolving career of every moral being
of the entire universe.
We are born
to develop God-consciousness.
(0:12.12) ...we
know
that there dwells within the human mind a fragment of God, and that
there sojourns with the human soul the Spirit of Truth; and we further
know that these spirit forces conspire to enable material man to grasp
the reality of spiritual values and to comprehend the philosophy of
universe meanings. But even more certainly we know that these spirits
of the Divine Presence are able to assist man in the spiritual
appropriation of all truth contributory to the enhancement of the
ever-progressing reality of personal religious experience —
God-consciousness.
(5:5.11)
God-consciousness,
as it is experienced by an evolving mortal of the realms, must consist
of three varying factors, three differential levels of reality
realization. There is first the mind consciousness — the
comprehension of the idea
of God. Then
follows the
soul consciousness — the realization of the ideal
of God. Last, dawns the spirit consciousness
— the realization of the spirit
reality
of
God. By the unification of these factors of the divine realization, no
matter how incomplete, the mortal personality at all times overspreads
all conscious levels with a realization of the personality
of God.
You
are living to grow an immortal soul of survival
value, and then, live
forever.
((1:3.7)
In the inner experience of man,
mind is
joined to matter. Such material-linked minds cannot survive mortal
death. The technique of survival is embraced in those adjustments of
the human will and those transformations in the mortal mind whereby
such a God-conscious intellect gradually becomes spirit taught and
eventually spirit led. This evolution of the human mind from matter
association to spirit union results in the transmutation of the
potentially spirit phases of the mortal mind into the morontia
realities of the immortal soul. Mortal mind subservient to matter is
destined to become increasingly material and consequently to suffer
eventual personality extinction; mind yielded to spirit is destined to
become increasingly spiritual and ultimately to achieve oneness with
the surviving and guiding divine spirit and in this way to attain
survival and eternity of personality existence.
(5:5.13)
Eternal
survival of
personality is wholly dependent on the choosing of the mortal mind,
whose decisions determine the survival potential of the immortal soul.
When the mind believes God and the soul knows God, and when, with the
fostering Adjuster, they all desire God, then is survival assured.
Finally,
you are a completely unique individual in the family of God. No one
else can do what you have to do here on the earth. You are the only one
who can reflect back to the world your unique part of the personality
of God.
(12:7.9)
The love of the Father absolutely
individualizes each personality as a unique child of the Universal
Father, a child without duplicate in infinity, a will creature
irreplaceable in all eternity. The Father's love glorifies each child
of God, illuminating each member of the celestial family, sharply
silhouetting the unique nature of each personal being against the
impersonal levels that lie outside the fraternal circuit of the Father
of all. The love of God strikingly portrays the transcendent value of
each will creature, unmistakably reveals the high value which the
Universal Father has placed upon each and every one of his children
from the highest creator personality of Paradise status to the lowest
personality of will dignity among the savage tribes of men in the dawn
of the human species on some evolutionary world of time and space.
Thank
you for this most important question. I hope my reply has been helpful
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