2013-01-27-Reflections on Soldiering and Brotherhood

Session

Note

A WWII paratrooper that served with the 506th PIR (Paratroop Infantry Regiment) of the 101ST Airborne Division.

Sergeant Muck and his friend, Alex Penkala, were killed in the fox hole they shared defending the U.S. lines at the Battle of the Bulge, near Bastogne, Belgium

Lesson

It is unfortunate that after millennia of pursuing the comprehension of Divinity, of attempting to understand what would please God more, humanity forgets to pay attention to the fact that pleasing God starts with service to our brethren, with loving and understanding each other first, and then realizing that we are all sons of the Infinite God. To this day, it is all understood backwards.

Moreover, men, governments and armies band together and go to battle with the understanding that God favors them and not the perceived enemy. I remember gathering in small groups around Chaplains in order to do some prayer and somehow get God’s benediction, and maybe some good luck, through this man to help us survive the upcoming battle.

Of course many of us believed in God, and in His Justice and good graces, and said our prayers and put ourselves to His mercy as bullets flew over our heads and shells exploded all around us. The Germans, many of them, were as scared as us and also did a lot of praying; there were many Catholics amongst them, simple men just like us. “Gott mit uns!” was engraved in their belt buckles, as if God would take sides in the ignorant struggles of men.

Our Sovereign Creator Son, Michael of Nebadon, came and went, two thousand years ago, and still humanity have not learned a thing about true brotherhood and loving each other. Men on Urantia still kill each other with the same barbarism that they did thousands of years ago, but they are now more efficient at it and the weapons are far more destructive.

As the next best thing to what true brotherhoods of men are supposed to be, we formed brotherhoods of like-minded people, people with the same goals, which in our case was to bring defeat to Nazi Germany from the air. What a different world Urantia would be if the great and sincere brotherhood that we had as paratroopers, could be shared by all men with the intention to help and love each other whenever and wherever possible.

This was the brotherhood that Jesus of Nazareth had in mind when he preached to Jew and Gentile, to men and women, to the young and the elderly. We were ready to give our lives for each other without hesitation. We listened to each others hopes and fears, and we counseled and consoled each other as well.

We encountered many a captured German soldier that was just as simple and as humble as we were, from all walks of life. Many followed orders that they had no choice but to obey. I am sure they could have made great friends under different circumstances. There were also some German soldiers that were truly wicked and sought pleasure in harming others, with many of those in the ranks of the SS units.

In the absence of any viable alternatives for good role modeling, many men in the German elite units took the poison that their superiors instilled in them about the inferiority of those that were not like them and committed many atrocities without a second thought. These men typically fought to the bitter end and were the most troublesome to deal with. Like an old saying goes, there is nothing more dangerous than a fool with a cause.

Nowadays, as many a soldier continues to find out in the current conflicts in the Middle East, there are men who are determined to cause as much harm to their enemies as possible and fight to the death as well. There is no honor in the horrors witnessed in war, where not only bodies but souls suffer amputations, figuratively speaking and, as one of your actors stated in a movie, in many a case there are no “prosthetics” to mend that soul with the deficient scientific methods used to deal with said cases.

To prove the point, you only have to see the number of active duty soldiers and veterans that sadly continue to end their lives after finding themselves incapable of coping with the horrific situations that they have lived through while in combat. The only hell that there is in existence is war itself.

I am saddened by the willingness exhibited by many governments on Urantia to continue to pursue warfare as a mean of furthering nothing more than the agendas of some elitist minorities. To them, soldiers mean nothing and are just pawns in the great game of power and world domination. Like all wars, this situation one day will end as no evil can resist the Will of the Eternal God and His desire that there is finally everlasting peace on Urantia.

Me, and quite a few fellow former paratroopers have again a brotherhood, but ours is now founded in love and service to our brethren from all corners of the domains that the Mansion Worlds in our system serve. We are all one and the same, an extension of the Will of the Eternal God in the worlds of time.

We extend love and mercy in His name to all those that we encounter. We tell tales of trust in God’s mercy, from the fields of Normandy to the woods of Bastogne; for there, in the middle of all of that horror, the Eternal God sustained us and gave us comfort so we could carry on with our mission to help bring peace again to our troubled world.

Very challenging times lay ahead for the Agondonters of Urantia; that wonderful brotherhood of mortals that trust and believe in the Eternal God without the direct assistance of Celestial personalities, which is common in worlds not troubled by rebellion. Just like it happened to us as paratroopers in the cold and thick forests of Belgium, when we were completely surrounded by the German army, you find yourselves now surrounded by sin and evil.

You must hold your “spiritual ground”, using God’s love and mercy to defeat the evil in the hearts of those that are spiritually ignorant and know not what they do when they harm others. You are not forgotten, and just like one day we were assisted from the air to break out of our predicament in that forest, God will manifest His Will in a more tangible way to help you with your spiritual work of restoring Urantia to back to His fold.

In this regard, you can compare Monjoronson, Urantia’s Magisterial Son of assignment, with general George Patton and his 3rd army. Evil will retreat and be defeated, just like the German army was, all those years ago.

Closing

When you think that spiritual work is tough and doesn’t seem to make any progress, when you experience fear as evil threatens to disrupt your work or even cause you harm, my dear Agondonters, just remember that you will shine even more in selfless service to your brethren and your exploits will forever be remembered. Show to the world that you are at your best when doing Father’s will in the face of challenges from all sides. In our case, when we were reminded that we were surrounded, we would say “we are paratroopers; we are supposed to be surrounded”. In the end, we overcame, and so will you. May God bless you all.