Error, Evil, Sin, Iniquity

In modern-day understanding, and even through a reading of the Bible, it might seem
possible to conclude that evil and good are in equal balance, that there is a struggle
between equal adversaries -- God on the one hand and Lucifer or Satan or the devil on
the other. This concept has led to much confusion regarding the influence of evil in
God's creation. The Urantia Book puts this hypothetical struggle into a more meaningful
perspective. The topical study of Urantia Book teachings about God, as well as this
study of Evil and Sin make clear that the heavenly Father does not create evil, that
instead evil stems from personal erroneous free will choice.
Lucifer and Satan and all of the countless number of other spirit beings that inhabit the
local universe of Nebadon are essentially the Creator Son's children, Jesus' children
when he was here in physical form. There is no equality between Lucifer or Satan and
Jesus -- Jesus is their parent and has parental authority over them. Neither are they
equal with God, who is Jesus' parent. The power of evil of Lucifer and Satan could
appear to us, as mortal beings on this world, to be absolute, but it's not. Lucifer and
Satan, despite having once been high and respected beings, were essentially low-level
administrators in the overall administration of the local universe of Nebadon, which
contains 10,000 other systems and system sovereigns -- Lucifer was but one of those;
he chose to instigate a rebellion. Although disastrous for those beings and inhabited
worlds involved, the rebellion in the system of Satania was a relatively minor episode in
this local universe.
Consider that a local universe, under the administrative control of a Creator Son, has
the potential of containing 10 million inhabited worlds. The 10 million inhabitable
planets of a local universe are further administered in groups of 1,000, called systems.
The local universe in which our world exists is named Nebadon and the system within
Nebadon in which we are administered is named Satania -- 1,000 potential inhabited
worlds administered by a system sovereign. Lucifer was that system sovereign and
Satan was one of his administrative assistants. They were high and respected spirit
beings until the time Lucifer chose rebellion.

What IS Evil? Que es el mal

"Evil is the unconscious or unintended transgression of the divine law, the
Father's will. Evil is likewise the measure of the imperfectness of obedience to
the Father's will.
Sin is the conscious, knowing, and deliberate transgression of the divine law,
the Father's will. Sin is the measure of unwillingness to be divinely led and
spiritually directed.
Iniquity is the willful, determined, and persistent transgression of the divine
law, the Father's will. Iniquity is the measure of the continued rejection of the
Father's loving plan of personality survival and the Sons' merciful ministry
of salvation.
"By nature, before the rebirth of the spirit, mortal man is subject to inherent evil
tendencies, but such natural imperfections of behavior are neither sin nor iniquity.
Mortal man is just beginning his long ascent to the perfection of the Father in
Paradise. To be imperfect or partial in natural endowment is not sinful. Man is indeed
subject to evil, but he is in no sense the child of the evil one unless he has knowingly
and deliberately chosen the paths of sin and the life of iniquity. Evil is inherent in the
natural order of this world, but sin is an attitude of conscious rebellion which
was brought to this world by those who fell from spiritual light into gross
darkness.
"But, my son, you should know that the Father does not purposely afflict his children.
Man brings down upon himself unnecessary affliction as a result of his persistent refusal
to walk in the better ways of the divine will. Affliction is potential in evil, but much
of it has been produced by sin and iniquity. Many unusual events have transpired
on this world, and it is not strange that all thinking men should be perplexed by the
scenes of suffering and affliction which they witness. But of one thing you may be sure:
The Father does not send affliction as an arbitrary punishment for wrongdoing. The
imperfections and handicaps of evil are inherent; the penalties of sin are inevitable; the
destroying consequences of iniquity are inexorable. Man should not blame God for those
afflictions which are the natural result of the life which he chooses to live; neither should
man complain of those experiences which are a part of life as it is lived on this world. It
is the Father's will that mortal man should work persistently and consistently
toward the betterment of his estate on earth. Intelligent application would enable
man to overcome much of his earthly misery." ~ Jesus, The Urantia Book, (148:4.3)
Jesus portrayed conquest by sacrifice, the sacrifice of pride and selfishness. By showing
mercy, he meant to portray spiritual deliverance from all grudges, grievances, anger,
and the lust for selfish power and revenge. And when he said, "Resist not evil," he later
explained that he did not mean to condone sin or to counsel fraternity with iniquity. He
intended the more to teach forgiveness, to "resist not evil treatment of one's
personality, evil injury to one's feelings of personal dignity." ~ The Urantia
Book, (141:3.8)
As you view the world, remember that the black patches of evil which you see are
shown against a white background of ultimate good. You do not view merely white
patches of good which show up miserably against a black background of evil. ~ The
Urantia Book, 195:5.12

Truth and Falsehood

Evolutionary man finds it difficult fully to comprehend the significance and to grasp the
meanings of evil, error, sin, and iniquity. Man is slow to perceive that contrastive
perfection and imperfection produce potential evil; that conflicting truth and falsehood
create confusing error; that the divine endowment of freewill choice eventuates in the
divergent realms of sin and righteousness; that the persistent pursuit of divinity leads to
the kingdom of God as contrasted with its continuous rejection, which leads to the
domains of iniquity.
The Gods neither create evil nor permit sin and rebellion. Potential evil is time-existent
in a universe embracing differential levels of perfection meanings and values. Sin is
potential in all realms where imperfect beings are endowed with the ability to choose
between good and evil. The very conflicting presence of truth and untruth, fact and
falsehood, constitutes the potentiality of error. The deliberate choice of evil constitutes
sin; the willful rejection of truth is error; the persistent pursuit of sin and error is iniquity.
~ The Urantia Book, (54:0.1)
Law is life itself and not the rules of its conduct. Evil is a transgression of law, not a
violation of the rules of conduct pertaining to life, which is the law. Falsehood is not a
matter of narration technique but something premeditated as a perversion of truth.
~ The Urantia Book, (48:6.22)

Demonic Influence?
In general, when weak and dissolute mortals are supposed to be under the influence of
devils and demons, they are merely being dominated by their own inherent and
debased tendencies, being led away by their own natural propensities. The devil has
been given a great deal of credit for evil which does not belong to him. ~ The Urantia
Book, (53:8.9)

Penalties of Sin
Undiluted evil, complete error, willful sin, and unmitigated iniquity are inherently and
automatically suicidal. ~ The Urantia Book, (2:3.5)
Although conscious and wholehearted identification with evil (sin) is the equivalent of
nonexistence (annihilation), there must always intervene between the time of such
personal identification with sin and the execution of the penalty—the automatic result of
such a willful embrace of evil—a period of time of sufficient length to allow for such an
adjudication of such an individual's universe status as will prove entirely satisfactory to
all related universe personalities, and which will be so fair and just as to win the
approval of the sinner himself. ~ The Urantia Book, (54:3.2)
There are many ways of looking at sin, but from the universe philosophic viewpoint sin
is the attitude of a personality who is knowingly resisting cosmic reality. Error might be
regarded as a misconception or distortion of reality. Evil is a partial realization of, or
maladjustment to, universe realities. But sin is a purposeful resistance to divine reality—
a conscious choosing to oppose spiritual progress—while iniquity consists in an open
and persistent defiance of recognized reality and signifies such a degree of personality
disintegration as to border on cosmic insanity.
Error suggests lack of intellectual keenness; evil, deficiency of wisdom; sin, abject
spiritual poverty; but iniquity is indicative of vanishing personality control. ~ The
Urantia Book, (67:1.4)

The Sin of Another Cannot Rob You of Your

Right to Survival
But one thing should be made clear: If you are made to suffer the evil consequences of
the sin of some member of your family, some fellow citizen or fellow mortal, even
rebellion in the system or elsewhere—no matter what you may have to endure because
of the wrongdoing of your associates, fellows, or superiors—you may rest secure in the
eternal assurance that such tribulations are transient afflictions. None of these fraternal
consequences of misbehavior in the group can ever jeopardize your eternal prospects or
in the least degree deprive you of your divine right of Paradise ascension and God
attainment. ~ The Urantia Book, (54:6.4)
Evil and sin visit their consequences in material and social realms and may sometimes
even retard spiritual progress on certain levels of universe reality, but never does the
sin of any being rob another of the realization of the divine right of personality survival.
Eternal survival can be jeopardized only by the decisions of the mind and the choice of
the soul of the individual himself. ~ The Urantia Book, (67:7.5)

The Problem of Freewill

This is the problem: If freewill man is endowed with the powers of creativity in the inner
man, then must we recognize that freewill creativity embraces the potential of freewill
destructivity. And when creativity is turned to destructivity, you are face to face with the
devastation of evil and sin—oppression, war, and destruction. Evil is a partiality of
creativity which tends toward disintegration and eventual destruction. All conflict is evil
in that it inhibits the creative function of the inner life—it is a species of civil war in the
personality. ~ The Urantia Book, (111:4.11)
The possibility of mistaken judgment (evil) becomes sin only when the human will
consciously endorses and knowingly embraces a deliberate immoral judgment. ~ The
Urantia Book, (3:5.15)
There are many ways of looking at sin, but from the universe philosophic viewpoint sin
is the attitude of a personality who is knowingly resisting cosmic reality. Error might be
regarded as a misconception or distortion of reality. Evil is a partial realization of, or
maladjustment to, universe realities. But sin is a purposeful resistance to divine reality—
a conscious choosing to oppose spiritual progress—while iniquity consists in an open
and persistent defiance of recognized reality and signifies such a degree of personality
disintegration as to border on cosmic insanity. ~ The Urantia Book, (67:1.4)
The problem of sin is not self-existent in the finite world. The fact of finiteness is not evil
or sinful. The finite world was made by an infinite Creator—it is the handiwork of his
divine Sons—and therefore it must be good. It is the misuse, distortion, and perversion
of the finite that gives origin to evil and sin. ~ The Urantia Book, (111:6.3)
Good is the carrying out of the divine plans; sin is a deliberate transgression of the
divine will; evil is the misadaptation of plans and the maladjustment of techniques
resulting in universe disharmony and planetary confusion. ~ The Urantia Book, (75:4.3)
It requires a great and noble character, having started out wrong, to turn about and go
right. All too often one's own mind tends to justify continuance in the path of error when
once it is entered upon. ~ The Urantia Book, (184:2.12)

Forgiveness of Sin
The forgiveness of sin by Deity is the renewal of loyalty relations following a period of
the human consciousness of the lapse of such relations as the consequence of
conscious rebellion. The forgiveness does not have to be sought, only received as the
consciousness of re-establishment of loyalty relations between the creature and the
Creator. And all the loyal sons of God are happy, service-loving, and ever-progressive in
the Paradise ascent. ~ The Urantia Book, (89:10.6)
By opening the human end of the channel of the God-man communication, mortals
make immediately available the ever-flowing stream of divine ministry to the creatures
of the worlds. When man hears God's spirit speak within the human heart, inherent in
such an experience is the fact that God simultaneously hears that man's prayer. Even
the forgiveness of sin operates in this same unerring fashion. The Father in heaven has
forgiven you even before you have thought to ask him, but such forgiveness is not
available in your personal religious experience until such a time as you forgive your
fellow men. God's forgiveness in fact is not conditioned upon your forgiving your fellows,
but in experience it is exactly so conditioned. And this fact of the synchrony of divine
and human forgiveness was thus recognized and linked together in the prayer which
Jesus taught the apostles. ~ The Urantia Book, (146:2.4)
Jesus taught that sin is not the child of a defective nature but rather the offspring of a
knowing mind dominated by an unsubmissive will. Regarding sin, he taught that God
has forgiven; that we make such forgiveness personally available by the act of forgiving
our fellows. When you forgive your brother in the flesh, you thereby create the capacity
in your own soul for the reception of the reality of God's forgiveness of your own
misdeeds. ~ The Urantia Book, (170:2.23)

Lessons From the Cross

The cross forever shows that the attitude of Jesus toward sinners was neither
condemnation nor condonation, but rather eternal and loving salvation. Jesus is truly a
savior in the sense that his life and death do win men over to goodness and righteous
survival. Jesus loves men so much that his love awakens the response of love in the
human heart. Love is truly contagious and eternally creative. Jesus' death on the cross
exemplifies a love which is sufficiently strong and divine to forgive sin and swallow up
all evil-doing. Jesus disclosed to this world a higher quality of righteousness than justice
—mere technical right and wrong. Divine love does not merely forgive wrongs; it
absorbs and actually destroys them. The forgiveness of love utterly transcends the
forgiveness of mercy. Mercy sets the guilt of evil-doing to one side; but love destroys
forever the sin and all weakness resulting therefrom. Jesus brought a new method of
living to Urantia. He taught us not to resist evil but to find through him a goodness
which effectually destroys evil. The forgiveness of Jesus is not condonation; it is
salvation from condemnation. Salvation does not slight wrongs; it makes them right.
True love does not compromise nor condone hate; it destroys it. The love of Jesus is
never satisfied with mere forgiveness. The Master's love implies rehabilitation, eternal
survival. It is altogether proper to speak of salvation as redemption if you mean this
eternal rehabilitation.
Jesus, by the power of his personal love for men, could break the hold of sin and evil. He
thereby set men free to choose better ways of living. Jesus portrayed a deliverance from
the past which in itself promised a triumph for the future. Forgiveness thus provided
salvation. The beauty of divine love, once fully admitted to the human heart, forever
destroys the charm of sin and the power of evil. ~ The Urantia Book, (188:5.2)

The History of "Original Sin"

All human disease and natural death was at first believed to be due to spirit influence.
Even at the present time some civilized races regard disease as having been produced
by "the enemy" and depend upon religious ceremonies to effect healing. Later and more
complex systems of theology still ascribe death to the action of the spirit world, all of
which has led to such doctrines as original sin and the fall of man. ~ The Urantia
Book, (86:3.3)
Primitive man regarded himself as being in debt to the spirits, as standing in need of
redemption. As the savages looked at it, in justice the spirits might have visited much
more bad luck upon them. As time passed, this concept developed into the doctrine of
sin and salvation. The soul was looked upon as coming into the world under forfeit—
original sin. The soul must be ransomed; a scapegoat must be provided. ~ The Urantia
Book, (89:0.1)
The earliest idea of the sacrifice was that of a neutrality assessment levied by ancestral
spirits; only later did the idea of atonement develop. As man got away from the notion
of the evolutionary origin of the race, as the traditions of the days of the Planetary
Prince and the sojourn of Adam filtered down through time, the concept of sin and of
original sin became widespread, so that sacrifice for accidental and personal sin evolved
into the doctrine of sacrifice for the atonement of racial sin. The atonement of the
sacrifice was a blanket insurance device which covered even the resentment and
jealousy of an unknown god.
Surrounded by so many sensitive spirits and grasping gods, primitive man was face to
face with such a host of creditor deities that it required all the priests, ritual, and
sacrifices throughout an entire lifetime to get him out of spiritual debt. The doctrine of
original sin, or racial guilt, started every person out in serious debt to the spirit powers.
~ The Urantia Book, (89:4.5)
Religion has always been largely a matter of rites, rituals, observances, ceremonies, and
dogmas. It has usually become tainted with that persistently mischief-making error, the
chosen-people delusion. The cardinal religious ideas of incantation, inspiration,
revelation, propitiation, repentance, atonement, intercession, sacrifice, prayer,
confession, worship, survival after death, sacrament, ritual, ransom, salvation,
redemption, covenant, uncleanness, purification, prophecy, original sin — they all go
back to the early times of primordial ghost fear. ~ The Urantia Book, (92:3.2)
In only one matter did Paul fail to keep pace with Philo or to transcend the teachings of
this wealthy and educated Jew of Alexandria, and that was the doctrine of the
atonement; Philo taught deliverance from the doctrine of forgiveness only by the
shedding of blood. He also possibly glimpsed the reality and presence of the Thought
Adjusters more clearly than did Paul. But Paul's theory of original sin, the doctrines of
hereditary guilt and innate evil and redemption therefrom, was partially Mithraic in
origin, having little in common with Hebrew theology, Philo's philosophy, or Jesus'
teachings. Some phases of Paul's teachings regarding original sin and the atonement
were original with himself. ~ The Urantia Book, (121:6.5)
Please see Paper 89 -Sin, Sacrifice, and Atonement, for more history regarding the
concept of sin.
- Topical Studies Index Page -
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