Thank you for clarifying that you were only using a "metaphor" when you say,
Sin is understood more as an illness than a transgression …
But then, metaphors can be misleading, and in this case, I don't believe the metaphor of sin as an "illness" is substantiated by the teachings of the Urantia Book or Jesus.
The experience of God-consciousness remains the same from generation to generation, but with each advancing epoch in human knowledge the philosophic concept and the theologic definitions of God must change. God-knowingness, religious consciousness, is a universe reality, but no matter how valid (real) religious experience is, it must be willing to subject itself to intelligent criticism and reasonable philosophic interpretation; it must not seek to be a thing apart in the totality of human experience. (69.7)
Jesus and the Urantia Book both clearly associated Sin with "transgression" of God's will. The religious philosophy one espouses will vary depending on the metaphors one uses. It would not make sense to teach, as the Urantia Book does, that evil is the unconscious transgression and sin is the conscious transgression of the divine law, the Father's will, if sin was understood as "more ... an illness than a transgression."
"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. (1660.2)
"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. (1660.3)
"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.”
The question of the child falling ill and the parents seeking the cure poses what I would call a
false dichotomy; either God is seeking to cure his children, or he is a stern judgmental task master. The Urantia Book puts this false dichotomy to rest once and for all in its beautifully unified philosophy of the nature of God and his relationship with creatures, and their unconscious or conscious transgression of divine law, that is taught in the Urantia Book. We are told that "towards sin God strikes no personal attitude, for sin is not a spiritual reality; it is not personal; therefore does only the justice of God take cognizance of its existence." Of course,
The Creators are the very first to attempt to save man from the disastrous results of his foolish transgression of the divine laws. God's love is by nature a fatherly affection; therefore does he sometimes "chasten us for our own profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness." Even during your fiery trials remember that "in all our afflictions he is afflicted with us." (39.2)
It seems that the response of the Father to his creatures is eternally that of a loving Father, and the bestowal of his Creator Son in the likenss of flesh and blood witnesses to the extent the Father will go to win back even his lost children, but when the creature becomes
wholly identified with sin, we are told "This attitude of the divine nature would apparently change if the sinner finally identified himself wholly with sin just as the same mortal mind may also fully identify itself with the indwelling spirit Adjuster."
While it is true that it is not the Universal Father that abandons his finite children, but rather they who abandon him by fully embracing sin, it is not equally true that once the finite creature becomes fully indentified with sin and therefore becomes iniquitous, and hence unreal personally, that the Father continues to strike an attitude of love toward such an unreal being. God's love is cognoscente of the person (personal reality), but once that person becomes wholly identified with sin they become personally unreal, and hence only God’s justice takes cognoscente of the sin, which is eventually isolated and annihilated in the eventuated extinction of such a wholly sin identified being.
Edited by Fellow Reader, 29 September 2008 - 11:26 AM.