Response to Jeanne Melcoir's "Whither Goest Thou, Woman?"

       I remember the rise of the feminist movement in the '60's and the extreme sensitivity to gender in language that it fostered. A generation has now been indoctrinated in this way of thinking. Maleness is evil, femaleness is good, but actually there is no difference between the two. I don't think this is the intended philosophical statement of feminist doctrine but it is the illogical viewpoint that pervades feminist attitude and frustrates many who equally respect both genders.

           I received an issue of " The Fellowship Herald", a very interesting magazine with many points of view. The article, "Whither Goest thou, woman" by Jeanne Melchoir was very disturbing and sad to me. Jeanne rejects the Urantia Book as a good revelation because she believes humans have interfered by injecting "gender bias" in the Urantia papers. She says many who are sensitive to language have a hard time reading or accepting the Urantia Book as the 5th epochal revelation. I am so happy I was not culturally indoctrinated by feminists when I first read the Urantia Book and devoured it with a hungry and thankful soul. The idea of gender didn't enter my mind. I was thrilled that God loved me with an infinite love. God is spirit, not male, not female.

           Jeanne also dislikes the idea of the universe mother spirit's obedience to Michael and inversely, I would assume, Michael's total dependence on the mother spirit. Our very minds, our ability to think, is made possible by this mother spirit. Jeanne seems disturbed by the way the local universe mother spirit evolves to equality status with Michael. How can one be angry at an evolutionary technique? Would a person obsessed with equality issues in our highly charged political culture be upset at God for the technique of making us climb the longest evolutionary ladder of all in order to attain perfection? Except for God's love for each and every individual, the universe is typically nothing but inequalities existing in every phase of reality!

           The Urantia book must deal with language that is understandable to sex creatures living in a primitive culture. For instance, "in dealing with sex creatures it is our custom to speak of those beings of more direct descent from the Father and the Son as the sons of God, while referring to the children of the Spirit as the daughters of God. Angels are, therefore, commonly designated by feminine pronouns on the sex planets." -UB. We are called sons of God not because of gender bias, but for the reason stated. To deny reality in order to be politically correct in this primitive culture, to me, is dangerous to one's spiritual growth. To hold on to elitist academic thinking to the extent that we propose to our celestial superiors that their revelatory techniques are flawed should drive us to examine our own possible defects rather than assigning defects to our celestial superiors.

           The last sentence of the Urantia Book, after nearly two million words detailing God, states "When all is said and done, the Father idea is still the highest human concept of God." Now, are the revelators joking with us, or should we learn something from them? We are divided into two genders with differences in nature that persist for a long time in our universe career. Could the fact of two genders be a shadow of a higher universe reality, our first "easy" lesson intended to teach us to socialize and to respect and value those complementary differences? Socialization with very diverse beings is a major part of our local universe career.

         Speculation:

           I don't want to apologize for the Urantia Book authors. I think they mean what they say and it is for us to understand the teaching, or else we run the risk of fighting the very reality of God's universe. But I offer this to those who are sensitive to gender words. God is described as a Father because that is the nature of his love. It is a description of the "energy" of his love. I think the Urantia Book may use gender words to describe types of love. My interpretation is that the Father's love is expansive and positive, flowing outward aggressively. A mothers love draws into itself, negatively in the energy sense, pulling personalities into the very source of her heart. I am sure there are a huge number of flavors of divine love that go far beyond our ability to comprehend. We are primitive, arrogant and illogical mortals living on a planet in the far corner of a vast universe, sex beings living in a time of turmoil in our family life. Understanding deity relationships in terms of father, mother, son and daughter may be difficult for some people but the truth revealing commission chose this as the best way to portray reality to us.