The Strange Preacher

Saturday, 21 May 2022

The Urantia book offers a treasure trove of remarkable insights. One that I find interesting, and feel speaks to the age: With God the Father, sonship is the great relationship. With God the Supreme, achievement is the prerequisite to status — one must do something as well as be something [115:0.1]. It seems to me that the children of the Age of the Woke are fixated with the being phase of reality and repudiate the merits of the doing phase. Martin Luther King Jnr. understood the importance of this dynamic when he said that he had a dream that one day his children ‘would be judged, not by the colour of their skin but, by the content of their character.’

I’ll never forget that line. As the years have passed I crafted a maxim about character: Character is what is left in the wake of the decisions that you make. Character, then, is a testament to your decisions and values. It is not fixed or set in stone. It can change as you change and grow, are inspired by higher values to make better decisions. As you grow, and mature, you discover new truths and values and adjust your settings accordingly – at least this is what you do if you are aspiring to be wise, if you aspire to the happy life. One cannot be happy and live out of harmony with truth, one can be in denial about this but there can be no abiding happiness with conformity with truth. And as your awareness and appreciation of truth grows and deepens and your endeavour to align yourself ever more perfectly with it, so too does the trajectory of your life arc in response.

When we place the content of character above the colour of skin [or any incidental factor which we inherit from nature] what we are saying is that we are defined by our values. It does not matter if you are black or white, it matters that you turn up on time for work, and when you are there that you do a good days work. It does not matter if you are Jewish or Christian, it matters that you turn up for your family. You are defined by what you do, not by genetic factors over which you have no control. Do you make a positive difference at work, home, school, or neighbourhood? Then that is admirable. It doesn’t matter what colour you are, it doesn’t matter what you like to do between the sheets, it matters that you can get a job done, that you can be relied upon.

These days we see these ridiculous spectacles of people introducing themselves by their “identity” – by the very things that they are not responsible for and that can tell absolutely nothing of value about them. You don’t achieve ‘blackness’ – how can you be proud of something that you didn’t have to work to accomplish? Being born black or gay is not a boast, it’s just a fact. How can you be proud of being Irish or American? Pride is the flower of achievement. Being tall, or blond, or having a big ass, is not an achievement. It required zero effort, this was just the hand you were dealt by the Cosmos. In this universe, it’s not the hand you were dealt that’s important but how you play it. A person might be Yellow and be an awful parent, a Muslim and a terrible neighbour, the important thing is not that they are Yellow or Muslim but that they are awful to their kids or neighbours. No sensible person could care less about what colour you are or the religion you were born into, but they are perfectly justified in caring how you might behave, or what your values might be.

If the Woke Brigade were to be truly consistent, and genuinely believe that all virtue consisted merely in being a thing then the things they do wouldn’t matter but that’s not what they truly believe. We know this because they are inclined to cherry pick specific ‘doings’ [accomplishments] and equating them with ‘beings’ [accidentals] such that “if that then this” – if white then you are an oppressor, if black you are oppressed.

It’s like with the push for ‘diversity’, it is as though you are not enough unless you are complemented by every other identity. This moronic form of thinking implicitly believes that everyone is inadequate, that no one is truly adequate, that all groups are inadequate because they are not truly ‘representative’ of the diversity of life. This is a lame ideology at best.

I have long pondered the fact that the book teaches that all specialised skill ultimately has its origins in one’s genes. Genetics determine how tall you are likely to be, how strong, what colour your eyes or skin will be, if your hair will be curly or straight, even your IQ. These traits are just what the Cosmos assigned to you. It is quite amusing to watch a person that is ‘proud’ of their IQ, like it was an accomplishment. Being proud of a high IQ is like being proud of being tall. Unless you used your tallness to benefit your community and family, unless you specifically parleyed these talents into an increase for yourself, your family, and your community, then you have nothing to be proud of. You could merely be arrogant, which is the shadow of pride.

Happiness is determined by accomplishments not accidents.

Accidentals can’t be changed, and they can tell us practically nothing of value about an individual or a group. Of one thing we can be sure, those vociferous few who refuse to recognise the importance of accomplishment over accidentals are running retrograde to the advance of civilisation and anyone supporting this lame ideology hamstrings the forward advance of civilisation.