accidents

• part of finite drama; vicissitude of evolution

4:1.12But in the larger sense the ap­par­ent “ac­ci­dents” of the cos­mos are un­doubt­edly a part of the fi­nite drama of the time-space ad­ven­ture of the In­fi­nite in his eter­nal ma­nip­u­la­tion of the Ab­so­lutes.

• always work out for welfare and progress

10:7.5The mor­tal mind can im­me­di­ately think of a thou­sand and one things—catas­trophic phys­i­cal events, ap­palling ac­ci­dents, hor­rific dis­as­ters, painful ill­nesses, and world-wide scourges—and ask whether such vis­i­ta­tions are cor­re­lated in the un­known ma­neu­ver­ing of this prob­a­ble func­tion­ing of the Su­preme Be­ing. Frankly, we do not know; we are not re­ally sure. But we do ob­serve that, as time passes, all these dif­fi­cult and more or less mys­te­ri­ous sit­u­a­tions al­ways work out for the wel­fare and prog­ress of the uni­verses. It may be that the cir­cum­stances of ex­is­tence and the in­ex­pli­ca­ble vi­cis­si­tudes of liv­ing are all in­ter­wo­ven into a mean­ing­ful pat­tern of high value by the func­tion of the Su­preme and the over­con­trol of the Trin­ity.

10:7.6As a son of God you can dis­cern the per­sonal at­ti­tude of love in all the acts of God the Fa­ther. But you will not al­ways be able to un­der­stand how many of the uni­verse acts of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity re­dound to the good of the in­di­vid­ual mor­tal on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of space. In the prog­ress of eter­nity the acts of the Trin­ity will be re­vealed as al­to­gether mean­ing­ful and con­sid­er­ate, but they do not al­ways so ap­pear to the crea­tures of time.

• blind a. do not occur

48:7.97. Blind and un­fore­seen ac­ci­dents do not oc­cur in the cos­mos. Nei­ther do the ce­les­tial be­ings as­sist the lower be­ing who re­fuses to act upon his light of truth.

65:5.1It was a source of re­gret to the Life Car­ri­ers that our spe­cial ef­forts to mod­ify in­tel­li­gent life on Uran­tia should have been so hand­i­capped by tragic per­ver­sions be­yond our con­trol: the Cali­gas­tia be­trayal and the Adamic de­fault.

65:5.2But through­out all of this bi­o­logic ad­ven­ture our great­est dis­ap­point­ment grew out of the re­ver­sion of cer­tain prim­i­tive plant life to the prechloro­phyll lev­els of par­a­sitic bac­te­ria on such an ex­ten­sive and un­ex­pected scale. This even­tu­al­ity in plant-life evo­lu­tion caused many dis­tress­ful dis­eases in the higher mam­mals, par­tic­u­larly in the more vul­ner­a­ble hu­man species. When we were con­fronted with this per­plex­ing sit­u­a­tion, we some­what dis­counted the dif­fi­cul­ties in­volved be­cause we knew that the sub­se­quent ad­mix­ture of the Adamic life plasm would so re­in­force the re­sist­ing pow­ers of the re­sult­ing blended race as to make it prac­ti­cally im­mune to all dis­eases pro­duced by the veg­etable type of or­gan­ism. But our hopes were doomed to dis­ap­point­ment ow­ing to the mis­for­tune of the Adamic de­fault.

65:5.3The uni­verse of uni­verses, in­clud­ing this small world called Uran­tia, is not be­ing man­aged merely to meet our ap­proval nor just to suit our con­ve­nience, much less to grat­ify our whims and sat­isfy our cu­rios­ity. The wise and all-pow­er­ful be­ings who are re­spon­si­ble for uni­verse man­age­ment un­doubt­edly know ex­actly what they are about; and so it be­comes Life Car­ri­ers and be­hooves mor­tal minds to en­list in pa­tient wait­ing and hearty co-op­er­a­tion with the rule of wis­dom, the reign of power, and the march of prog­ress.

65:5.4There are, of course, cer­tain com­pen­sa­tions for tribu­la­tion, such as Mi­chael’s be­stowal on Uran­tia. But ir­re­spec­tive of all such con­sid­er­a­tions, the later ce­les­tial super­vi­sors of this planet ex­press com­plete con­fi­dence in the ul­ti­mate evo­lu­tion­ary tri­umph of the hu­man race and in the even­tual vin­di­ca­tion of our orig­i­nal plans and life pat­terns.

• all effects preceded by definite causes

86:2.5But to con­tinue to as­cribe things dif­fi­cult of com­pre­hen­sion to super­nat­u­ral causes is noth­ing less than a lazy and con­ve­nient way of avoid­ing all forms of in­tel­lec­tual hard work. Luck is merely a term coined to cover the in­ex­pli­ca­ble in any age of hu­man ex­is­tence; it des­ig­nates those phe­nom­ena which men are un­able or un­will­ing to pen­e­trate. Chance is a word which sig­ni­fies that man is too ig­no­rant or too in­do­lent to de­ter­mine causes. Men re­gard a nat­u­ral oc­cur­rence as an ac­ci­dent or as bad luck only when they are des­ti­tute of cu­rios­ity and imag­i­na­tion, when the races lack ini­tia­tive and ad­ven­ture. Ex­plo­ration of the phe­nom­ena of life sooner or later de­stroys man’s be­lief in chance, luck, and so-called ac­ci­dents, sub­sti­tut­ing there­for a uni­verse of law and or­der wherein all ef­fects are pre­ceded by def­i­nite causes. Thus is the fear of ex­is­tence re­placed by the joy of liv­ing.

• primitives did not believe in

86:2.6The sav­age looked upon all na­ture as alive, as pos­sessed by some­thing. Civ­i­lized man still kicks and curses those inan­i­mate ob­jects which get in his way and bump him. Prim­i­tive man never re­garded any­thing as ac­ci­den­tal; al­ways was ev­ery­thing in­ten­tional. To prim­i­tive man the do­main of fate, the func­tion of luck, the spirit world, was just as un­or­ga­nized and hap­haz­ard as was prim­i­tive so­ci­ety. Luck was looked upon as the whim­si­cal and tem­per­a­men­tal re­ac­tion of the spirit world; later on, as the hu­mor of the gods.

• knowledge leading to scientific action only antidote for

86:7.4Mod­ern civ­i­lized races are just emerg­ing from ghost fear as an ex­pla­na­tion of luck and the com­mon­place in­equal­i­ties of ex­is­tence. Man­kind is achiev­ing eman­ci­pa­tion from the bond­age of the ghost-spirit ex­pla­na­tion of ill luck. But while men are giv­ing up the er­ro­neous doc­trine of a spirit cause of the vi­cis­si­tudes of life, they ex­hibit a sur­pris­ing will­ing­ness to ac­cept an al­most equally fal­la­cious teach­ing which bids them at­trib­ute all hu­man in­equal­i­ties to po­lit­i­cal mis­adap­ta­tion, so­cial in­jus­tice, and in­dus­trial com­pe­ti­tion. But new leg­is­la­tion, in­creas­ing phi­lan­thropy, and more in­dus­trial re­or­ga­ni­za­tion, how­ever good in and of them­selves, will not rem­edy the facts of birth and the ac­ci­dents of liv­ing. Only com­pre­hen­sion of facts and wise ma­nip­u­la­tion within the laws of na­ture will en­able man to get what he wants and to avoid what he does not want. Sci­en­tific knowl­edge, lead­ing to sci­en­tific ac­tion, is the only an­ti­dote for so-called ac­ci­den­tal ills.

• to God-knowing believer, does not matter if all things earthly crash

100:2.7Je­sus por­trayed the pro­found surety of the God-know­ing mor­tal when he said: “To a God-know­ing king­dom be­liever, what does it mat­ter if all things earthly crash?” Tem­po­ral se­cu­ri­ties are vul­ner­a­ble, but spir­i­tual sureties are im­preg­nable. When the flood tides of hu­man ad­ver­sity, self­ish­ness, cru­elty, hate, mal­ice, and jeal­ousy beat about the mor­tal soul, you may rest in the as­sur­ance that there is one in­ner bas­tion, the citadel of the spirit, which is ab­so­lutely unas­sail­able; at least this is true of ev­ery hu­man be­ing who has ded­i­cated the keep­ing of his soul to the in­dwelling spirit of the eter­nal God.

• redirecting cataclysms wreck temporal creations preliminary to rearing more enduring realities

100:2.8Af­ter such spir­i­tual at­tain­ment, whether se­cured by grad­ual growth or spe­cific cri­sis, there oc­curs a new ori­en­ta­tion of per­son­al­ity as well as the de­vel­op­ment of a new stan­dard of val­ues. Such spirit-born in­di­vid­u­als are so re­mo­ti­vated in life that they can calmly stand by while their fond­est am­bi­tions per­ish and their keen­est hopes crash; they pos­i­tively know that such catas­tro­phes are but the redi­rect­ing cat­a­clysms which wreck one’s tem­po­ral cre­ations pre­lim­i­nary to the rear­ing of the more no­ble and en­dur­ing re­al­i­ties of a new and more sub­lime level of uni­verse at­tain­ment.

• if psychic circles not attained due to unavoidable a., mansion world probation granted

112:5.6Though the cos­mic cir­cles of per­son­al­ity growth must even­tu­ally be at­tained, if, through no fault of your own, the ac­ci­dents of time and the hand­i­caps of ma­te­rial ex­is­tence pre­vent your mas­ter­ing these lev­els on your na­tive planet, if your in­ten­tions and de­sires are of sur­vival value, there are is­sued the de­crees of pro­ba­tion ex­ten­sion. You will be af­forded ad­di­tional time in which to prove your­self.

• Jesus › fall in sandstorm

123:4.5The only real ac­ci­dent Je­sus had up to this time was a fall down the back-yard stone stairs which led up to the can­vas-roofed bed­room. It hap­pened dur­ing an un­ex­pected July sand­storm from the east. The hot winds, car­ry­ing blasts of fine sand, usu­ally blew dur­ing the rainy sea­son, es­pe­cially in March and April. It was ex­traor­di­nary to have such a storm in July. When the storm came up, Je­sus was on the house­top play­ing, as was his habit, for dur­ing much of the dry sea­son this was his ac­cus­tomed play­room. He was blinded by the sand when de­scend­ing the stairs and fell. Af­ter this ac­ci­dent Joseph built a balustrade up both sides of the stair­way.

123:4.6There was no way in which this ac­ci­dent could have been pre­vented. It was not charge­able to ne­glect by the mid­way tem­po­ral guard­i­ans, one pri­mary and one sec­ondary mid­wayer hav­ing been as­signed to the watch­care of the lad; nei­ther was it charge­able to the guard­ian ser­a­phim. It sim­ply could not have been avoided. But this slight ac­ci­dent, oc­cur­ring while Joseph was ab­sent in En­dor, caused such great anx­i­ety to de­velop in Mary’s mind that she un­wisely tried to keep Je­sus very close to her side for some months.

• not arbitrarily interfered with

123:4.7Ma­te­rial ac­ci­dents, com­mon­place oc­cur­rences of a phys­i­cal na­ture, are not ar­bi­trar­ily in­ter­fered with by ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties. Un­der or­di­nary cir­cum­stances only mid­way crea­tures can in­ter­vene in ma­te­rial con­di­tions to safe­guard the per­sons of men and women of des­tiny, and even in spe­cial sit­u­a­tions these be­ings can so act only in obe­di­ence to the spe­cific man­dates of their su­pe­ri­ors.

123:4.8And this was but one of a num­ber of such mi­nor ac­ci­dents which sub­se­quently be­fell this in­quis­i­tive and ad­ven­tur­ous youth. If you en­vis­age the av­er­age child­hood and youth of an ag­gres­sive boy, you will have a fairly good idea of the youth­ful ca­reer of Je­sus, and you will be able to imag­ine just about how much anx­i­ety he caused his par­ents, par­tic­u­larly his mother.

• death of Joseph was permitted

126:2.2Just at the time when prospects were good and the fu­ture looked bright, an ap­par­ently cruel hand struck down the head of this Naz­a­reth house­hold, the af­fairs of this home were dis­rupted, and ev­ery plan for Je­sus and his fu­ture ed­u­ca­tion was de­mol­ished. This car­pen­ter lad, now just past four­teen years of age, awak­ened to the re­al­iza­tion that he had not only to ful­fill the com­mis­sion of his heav­enly Fa­ther to re­veal the di­vine na­ture on earth and in the flesh, but that his young hu­man na­ture must also shoul­der the re­spon­si­bil­ity of car­ing for his wid­owed mother and seven broth­ers and sis­ters—and an­other yet to be born. This lad of Naz­a­reth now be­came the sole sup­port and com­fort of this so sud­denly be­reaved fam­ily. Thus were per­mit­ted those oc­cur­rences of the nat­u­ral or­der of events on Uran­tia which would force this young man of des­tiny so early to as­sume these heavy but highly ed­u­ca­tional and dis­ci­plinary re­spon­si­bil­i­ties at­ten­dant upon be­com­ing the head of a hu­man fam­ily, of be­com­ing fa­ther to his own broth­ers and sis­ters, of sup­port­ing and pro­tect­ing his mother, of func­tion­ing as guard­ian of his fa­ther’s home, the only home he was to know while on this world.

• Jesus › advice regarding accidental wealth

132:5.9“7. Ac­ci­den­tal wealth—riches de­rived from the gen­eros­ity of one’s fel­lows or tak­ing ori­gin in the cir­cum­stances of life.

• Jesus › advice regarding accidental wealth

132:5.21“7. Ex­cept for the just and le­git­i­mate fees earned in ad­min­is­tra­tion, no man should lay per­sonal claim to that wealth which time and chance may cause to fall into his hands. Ac­ci­den­tal riches should be re­garded some­what in the light of a trust to be ex­pended for the ben­e­fit of one’s so­cial or eco­nomic group. The pos­ses­sors of such wealth should be ac­corded the ma­jor voice in the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the wise and ef­fec­tive dis­tri­bu­tion of such un­earned re­sources. Civ­i­lized man will not al­ways look upon all that he con­trols as his per­sonal and pri­vate pos­ses­sion.

• not visitations of divine judgments

149:2.10As Je­sus min­gled with the peo­ple, they found him en­tirely free from the su­per­sti­tions of that day. He was free from re­li­gious prej­u­dices; he was never in­tol­er­ant. He had noth­ing in his heart re­sem­bling so­cial an­tag­o­nism. While he com­plied with the good in the re­li­gion of his fa­thers, he did not hes­i­tate to dis­re­gard man-made tra­di­tions of su­per­sti­tion and bond­age. He dared to teach that catas­tro­phes of na­ture, ac­ci­dents of time, and other calami­tous hap­pen­ings are not vis­i­ta­tions of di­vine judg­ments or mys­te­ri­ous dis­pen­sa­tions of Prov­i­dence. He de­nounced slav­ish de­vo­tion to mean­ing­less cer­e­mo­ni­als and ex­posed the fal­lacy of ma­te­ri­al­is­tic wor­ship. He boldly pro­claimed man’s spir­i­tual free­dom and dared to teach that mor­tals of the flesh are in­deed and in truth sons of the liv­ing God.

• believers not immune to

159:3.13Teach all be­liev­ers that those who en­ter the king­dom are not thereby ren­dered im­mune to the ac­ci­dents of time or to the or­di­nary catas­tro­phes of na­ture. Be­liev­ing the gospel will not pre­vent get­ting into trou­ble, but it will in­sure that you shall be un­afraid when trou­ble does over­take you. If you dare to be­lieve in me and whole­heart­edly pro­ceed to fol­low af­ter me, you shall most cer­tainly by so do­ing en­ter upon the sure path­way to trou­ble. I do not prom­ise to de­liver you from the wa­ters of ad­ver­sity, but I do prom­ise to go with you through all of them.

166:4.1While most Pales­tini­ans ate only two meals a day, it was the cus­tom of Je­sus and the apos­tles, when on a jour­ney, to pause at mid­day for rest and re­fresh­ment. And it was at such a noon­tide stop on the way to Phil­a­del­phia that Thomas asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, from hear­ing your re­marks as we jour­neyed this morn­ing, I would like to in­quire whether spir­i­tual be­ings are con­cerned in the pro­duc­tion of strange and ex­traor­di­nary events in the ma­te­rial world and, fur­ther, to ask whether the an­gels and other spirit be­ings are able to pre­vent ac­ci­dents.”

166:4.2In an­swer to Thomas’s in­quiry, Je­sus said: “Have I been so long with you, and yet you con­tinue to ask me such ques­tions? Have you failed to ob­serve how the Son of Man lives as one with you and con­sis­tently re­fuses to em­ploy the forces of heaven for his per­sonal sus­te­nance? Do we not all live by the same means whereby all men ex­ist? Do you see the power of the spir­i­tual world man­i­fested in the ma­te­rial life of this world, save for the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther and the some­time heal­ing of his af­flicted chil­dren?

166:4.3“All too long have your fa­thers be­lieved that pros­per­ity was the to­ken of di­vine ap­proval; that ad­ver­sity was the proof of God’s dis­plea­sure. I de­clare that such be­liefs are su­per­sti­tions. Do you not ob­serve that far greater num­bers of the poor joy­fully re­ceive the gospel and im­me­di­ately en­ter the king­dom? If riches ev­i­dence di­vine fa­vor, why do the rich so many times refuse to be­lieve this good news from heaven?

166:4.4“The Fa­ther causes his rain to fall on the just and the un­just; the sun like­wise shines on the righ­teous and the un­righ­teous. You know about those Galileans whose blood Pi­late min­gled with the sac­ri­fices, but I tell you these Galileans were not in any man­ner sin­ners above all their fel­lows just be­cause this hap­pened to them. You also know about the eigh­teen men upon whom the tower of Siloam fell, killing them. Think not that these men who were thus de­stroyed were of­fend­ers above all their breth­ren in Je­ru­sa­lem. These folks were sim­ply in­no­cent vic­tims of one of the ac­ci­dents of time.

166:4.5“There are three groups of events which may oc­cur in your lives:

166:4.6“1. You may share in those nor­mal hap­pen­ings which are a part of the life you and your fel­lows live on the face of the earth.

166:4.7“2. You may chance to fall vic­tim to one of the ac­ci­dents of na­ture, one of the mis­chances of men, know­ing full well that such oc­cur­rences are in no way pre­ar­ranged or oth­er­wise pro­duced by the spir­i­tual forces of the realm.

166:4.8“3. You may reap the har­vest of your di­rect ef­forts to com­ply with the nat­u­ral laws gov­ern­ing the world.

166:4.9“There was a cer­tain man who planted a fig tree in his yard, and when he had many times sought fruit thereon and found none, he called the vine­dressers be­fore him and said: ‘Here have I come these three sea­sons look­ing for fruit on this fig tree and have found none. Cut down this bar­ren tree; why should it en­cum­ber the ground?’ But the head gar­dener an­swered his mas­ter: ‘Let it alone for one more year so that I may dig around it and put on fer­til­izer, and then, next year, if it bears no fruit, it shall be cut down.’ And when they had thus com­plied with the laws of fruit­ful­ness, since the tree was liv­ing and good, they were re­warded with an abun­dant yield.

166:4.10“In the mat­ter of sick­ness and health, you should know that these bod­ily states are the re­sult of ma­te­rial causes; health is not the smile of heaven, nei­ther is af­flic­tion the frown of God.

166:4.11“The Fa­ther’s hu­man chil­dren have equal ca­pac­ity for the re­cep­tion of ma­te­rial bless­ings; there­fore does he be­stow things phys­i­cal upon the chil­dren of men with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion. When it comes to the be­stowal of spir­i­tual gifts, the Fa­ther is lim­ited by man’s ca­pac­ity for re­ceiv­ing these di­vine en­dow­ments. Al­though the Fa­ther is no re­specter of per­sons, in the be­stowal of spir­i­tual gifts he is lim­ited by man’s faith and by his will­ing­ness al­ways to abide by the Fa­ther’s will.”

166:4.12As they jour­neyed on to­ward Phil­a­del­phia, Je­sus con­tin­ued to teach them and to an­swer their ques­tions hav­ing to do with ac­ci­dents, sick­ness, and mir­a­cles, but they were not able fully to com­pre­hend this in­struc­tion. One hour of teach­ing will not wholly change the be­liefs of a life­time, and so Je­sus found it nec­es­sary to re­it­er­ate his mes­sage, to tell again and again that which he wished them to un­der­stand; and even then they failed to grasp the mean­ing of his earth mis­sion un­til af­ter his death and res­ur­rec­tion.