brotherhood (attitude)

• religious revelation

52:6.2Even on nor­mal evo­lu­tion­ary worlds the re­al­iza­tion of the world-wide broth­er­hood of man is not an easy ac­com­plish­ment. On a con­fused and dis­or­dered planet like Uran­tia such an achieve­ment re­quires a much longer time and ne­ces­si­tates far greater ef­fort. Un­aided so­cial evo­lu­tion can hardly achieve such happy re­sults on a spir­i­tu­ally iso­lated sphere. Re­li­gious rev­e­la­tion is es­sen­tial to the re­al­iza­tion of broth­er­hood on Uran­tia. While Je­sus has shown the way to the im­me­di­ate at­tain­ment of spir­i­tual broth­er­hood, the re­al­iza­tion of so­cial broth­er­hood on your world de­pends much on the achieve­ment of the fol­low­ing per­sonal trans­for­ma­tions and plan­e­tary ad­just­ments:

• social fraternity

52:6.31. So­cial fra­ter­nity. Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of in­ter­na­tional and in­ter­ra­cial so­cial con­tacts and fra­ter­nal as­so­ci­a­tions through travel, com­merce, and com­pet­i­tive play. De­vel­op­ment of a com­mon lan­guage and the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of mul­ti­lin­guists. The racial and na­tional in­ter­change of stu­dents, teach­ers, in­dus­tri­al­ists, and re­li­gious philoso­phers.

• intellectual cross-fertilization

52:6.42. In­tel­lec­tual cross-fer­til­iza­tion. Broth­er­hood is im­pos­si­ble on a world whose in­hab­i­tants are so prim­i­tive that they fail to rec­og­nize the folly of un­mit­i­gated self­ish­ness. There must oc­cur an ex­change of na­tional and racial lit­er­a­ture. Each race must be­come fa­mil­iar with the thought of all races; each na­tion must know the feel­ings of all na­tions. Ig­no­rance breeds sus­pi­cion, and sus­pi­cion is in­com­pat­i­ble with the es­sen­tial at­ti­tude of sym­pa­thy and love.

• ethical awakening

52:6.53. Eth­i­cal awak­en­ing. Only eth­i­cal con­scious­ness can un­mask the im­moral­ity of hu­man in­tol­er­ance and the sin­ful­ness of frat­ri­ci­dal strife. Only a moral con­science can con­demn the evils of na­tional envy and racial jeal­ousy. Only moral be­ings will ever seek for that spir­i­tual in­sight which is es­sen­tial to liv­ing the golden rule.

• political wisdom

52:6.64. Po­lit­i­cal wis­dom. Emo­tional ma­tu­rity is es­sen­tial to self-con­trol. Only emo­tional ma­tu­rity will in­sure the sub­sti­tu­tion of in­ter­na­tional tech­niques of civ­i­lized ad­ju­di­ca­tion for the bar­barous ar­bitra­ment of war. Wise states­men will some­time work for the wel­fare of hu­man­ity even while they strive to pro­mote the in­ter­est of their na­tional or racial groups. Self­ish po­lit­i­cal sagac­ity is ul­ti­mately sui­ci­dal—de­struc­tive of all those en­dur­ing qual­i­ties which in­sure plan­e­tary group sur­vival.

• spiritual insight

52:6.75. Spir­i­tual in­sight. The broth­er­hood of man is, af­ter all, pred­i­cated on the rec­og­ni­tion of the fa­ther­hood of God. The quick­est way to re­al­ize the broth­er­hood of man on Uran­tia is to ef­fect the spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tion of pres­ent-day hu­man­ity. The only tech­nique for ac­cel­er­at­ing the nat­u­ral trend of so­cial evo­lu­tion is that of ap­ply­ing spir­i­tual pres­sure from above, thus aug­ment­ing moral in­sight while en­hanc­ing the soul ca­pac­ity of ev­ery mor­tal to un­der­stand and love ev­ery other mor­tal. Mu­tual un­der­stand­ing and fra­ter­nal love are tran­scen­dent civ­i­liz­ers and mighty fac­tors in the world-wide re­al­iza­tion of the broth­er­hood of man.

• economic interdependence and social fraternity

99:7.5Eco­nomic in­ter­de­pen­dence and so­cial fra­ter­nity will ul­ti­mately con­duce to broth­er­hood. Man is nat­u­rally a dreamer, but sci­ence is sober­ing him so that re­li­gion can pres­ently ac­ti­vate him with far less dan­ger of pre­cip­i­tat­ing fa­nat­i­cal re­ac­tions. Eco­nomic ne­ces­si­ties tie man up with re­al­ity, and per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence brings this same man face to face with the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of an ever-ex­pand­ing and pro­gress­ing cos­mic cit­i­zen­ship.

• approaching other religions by truths in common

149:2.5The teach­ers of the re­li­gion of Je­sus should ap­proach other re­li­gions with the rec­og­ni­tion of the truths which are held in com­mon (many of which come di­rectly or in­di­rectly from Je­sus’ mes­sage) while they re­frain from plac­ing so much em­pha­sis on the dif­fer­ences.

• appeal to Adjuster

149:3.3When Je­sus first met with the evan­ge­lists at the Beth­saida camp, in con­clud­ing his ad­dress, he said: “You should re­mem­ber that in body and mind—emo­tion­ally—men re­act in­di­vid­u­ally. The only uni­form thing about men is the in­dwelling spirit. Though di­vine spir­its may vary some­what in the na­ture and ex­tent of their ex­pe­ri­ence, they re­act uni­formly to all spir­i­tual ap­peals. Only through, and by ap­peal to, this spirit can man­kind ever at­tain unity and broth­er­hood.” But many of the lead­ers of the Jews had closed the doors of their hearts to the spir­i­tual ap­peal of the gospel. From this day on they ceased not to plan and plot for the Mas­ter’s de­struc­tion. They were con­vinced that Je­sus must be ap­pre­hended, con­victed, and ex­e­cuted as a re­li­gious of­fender, a vi­o­la­tor of the car­di­nal teach­ings of the Jew­ish sa­cred law.

• spiritual insight

155:6.8Ev­ery race of man­kind has its own men­tal out­look upon hu­man ex­is­tence; there­fore must the re­li­gion of the mind ever run true to these var­i­ous racial view­points. Never can the re­li­gions of au­thor­ity come to uni­fi­ca­tion. Hu­man unity and mor­tal broth­er­hood can be achieved only by and through the super­en­dow­ment of the re­li­gion of the spirit. Racial minds may dif­fer, but all man­kind is in­dwelt by the same di­vine and eter­nal spirit. The hope of hu­man broth­er­hood can only be re­al­ized when, and as, the di­ver­gent mind re­li­gions of au­thor­ity be­come im­preg­nated with, and over­shad­owed by, the uni­fy­ing and en­nobling re­li­gion of the spirit—the re­li­gion of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence.

• antagonisms natural

16:9.7Un­selfish­ness, aside from pa­ren­tal in­stinct, is not al­to­gether nat­u­ral; other per­sons are not nat­u­rally loved or so­cially served. It re­quires the en­light­en­ment of rea­son, moral­ity, and the urge of re­li­gion, God-know­ing­ness, to gen­er­ate an un­selfish and al­tru­is­tic so­cial or­der. Man’s own per­son­al­ity aware­ness, self-con­scious­ness, is also di­rectly de­pen­dent on this very fact of in­nate other-aware­ness, this in­nate abil­ity to rec­og­nize and grasp the re­al­ity of other per­son­al­ity, rang­ing from the hu­man to the di­vine.

• races seldom take kindly to

39:5.42. The Spir­its of Broth­er­hood. It should be ap­par­ent that, when an Adam and Eve ar­rive on an evo­lu­tion­ary world, the task of achiev­ing racial har­mony and so­cial co-op­er­a­tion among its di­verse races is one of con­sid­er­able pro­por­tions. Sel­dom do these races of dif­fer­ent col­ors and var­ied na­tures take kindly to the plan of hu­man broth­er­hood. These prim­i­tive men only come to re­al­ize the wis­dom of peace­ful in­teras­so­ci­a­tion as a re­sult of ripened hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence and through the faith­ful min­istry of the se­raphic spir­its of broth­er­hood. With­out the work of these ser­a­phim the ef­forts of the Ma­te­rial Sons to har­mo­nize and ad­vance the races of an evolv­ing world would be greatly de­layed. And had your Adam ad­hered to the orig­i­nal plan for the ad­vance­ment of Uran­tia, by this time these spir­its of broth­er­hood would have worked un­be­liev­able trans­for­ma­tions in the hu­man race. In view of the Adamic de­fault, it is in­deed re­mark­able that these se­raphic or­ders have been able to fos­ter and bring to re­al­iza­tion even as much of broth­er­hood as you now have on Uran­tia.

• lack of natural brotherly attraction

68:1.1When brought closely to­gether, men of­ten learn to like one an­other, but prim­i­tive man was not nat­u­rally over­flow­ing with the spirit of broth­erly feel­ing and the de­sire for so­cial con­tact with his fel­lows. Rather did the early races learn by sad ex­pe­ri­ence that “in union there is strength”; and it is this lack of nat­u­ral broth­erly at­trac­tion that now stands in the way of im­me­di­ate re­al­iza­tion of the broth­er­hood of man on Uran­tia.

• antagonisms natural

70:0.2On an evo­lu­tion­ary world, an­tag­o­nisms are nat­u­ral; peace is se­cured only by some sort of so­cial reg­u­la­tive sys­tem. So­cial reg­u­la­tion is in­sep­a­ra­ble from so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion; as­so­ci­a­tion im­plies some con­trol­ling au­thor­ity. Gov­ern­ment com­pels the co-or­di­na­tion of the an­tag­o­nisms of the tribes, clans, fam­i­lies, and in­di­vid­u­als.

• doctrine betrays man into intolerance, bigotry

88:2.7In olden times the fe­tish word of au­thor­ity was a fear-in­spir­ing doc­trine, the most ter­ri­ble of all tyrants which en­slave men. A doc­tri­nal fe­tish will lead mor­tal man to be­tray him­self into the clutches of big­otry, fa­nati­cism, su­per­sti­tion, in­tol­er­ance, and the most atro­cious of bar­barous cru­el­ties. Mod­ern re­spect for wis­dom and truth is but the re­cent es­cape from the fe­tish-mak­ing ten­dency up to the higher lev­els of think­ing and rea­son­ing. Con­cern­ing the ac­cu­mu­lated fe­tish writ­ings which var­i­ous re­li­gion­ists hold as sa­cred books, it is not only be­lieved that what is in the book is true, but also that ev­ery truth is con­tained in the book. If one of these sa­cred books hap­pens to speak of the earth as be­ing flat, then, for long gen­er­a­tions, oth­er­wise sane men and women will refuse to ac­cept pos­i­tive ev­i­dence that the planet is round.

• prophets should not strengthen barriers to b.

92:5.16The fu­ture of Uran­tia will doubt­less be char­ac­ter­ized by the ap­pear­ance of teach­ers of re­li­gious truth—the Fa­ther­hood of God and the fra­ter­nity of all crea­tures. But it is to be hoped that the ar­dent and sin­cere ef­forts of these fu­ture proph­ets will be di­rected less to­ward the strength­en­ing of in­ter­re­li­gious bar­ri­ers and more to­ward the aug­men­ta­tion of the re­li­gious broth­er­hood of spir­i­tual wor­ship among the many fol­low­ers of the dif­fer­ing in­tel­lec­tual the­olo­gies which so char­ac­ter­ize Uran­tia of Sa­ta­nia.

• ecclesiastical authority

134:4.3If dif­fer­ent re­li­gions rec­og­nize the spirit sov­er­eignty of God the Fa­ther, then will all such re­li­gions re­main at peace. Only when one re­li­gion as­sumes that it is in some way su­pe­rior to all oth­ers, and that it pos­sesses ex­clu­sive au­thor­ity over other re­li­gions, will such a re­li­gion pre­sume to be in­tol­er­ant of other re­li­gions or dare to per­se­cute other re­li­gious be­liev­ers.

134:4.4Re­li­gious peace—broth­er­hood—can never ex­ist un­less all re­li­gions are will­ing to com­pletely di­vest them­selves of all ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity and fully sur­ren­der all con­cept of spir­i­tual sov­er­eignty. God alone is spirit sov­er­eign.

• ecclesiastical authority

134:4.8But the mo­ment you lose sight of the spirit sov­er­eignty of God the Fa­ther, some one re­li­gion will be­gin to as­sert its su­pe­ri­or­ity over other re­li­gions; and then, in­stead of peace on earth and good will among men, there will start dis­sen­sions, re­crim­i­na­tions, even re­li­gious wars, at least wars among re­li­gion­ists.

71:4.16The ap­pear­ance of gen­uine broth­er­hood sig­ni­fies that a so­cial or­der has ar­rived in which all men de­light in bear­ing one an­other’s bur­dens; they ac­tu­ally de­sire to prac­tice the golden rule. But such an ideal so­ci­ety can­not be re­al­ized when ei­ther the weak or the wicked lie in wait to take un­fair and un­holy ad­van­tage of those who are chiefly ac­tu­ated by de­vo­tion to the ser­vice of truth, beauty, and good­ness. In such a sit­u­a­tion only one course is prac­ti­cal: The “golden rulers” may es­tab­lish a pro­gres­sive so­ci­ety in which they live ac­cord­ing to their ide­als while main­tain­ing an ad­e­quate de­fense against their be­nighted fel­lows who might seek ei­ther to ex­ploit their pa­cific predilec­tions or to de­stroy their ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

173:3.3Je­sus did not de­spise the Phar­isees and Sad­ducees per­son­ally. It was their sys­tems of teach­ing and prac­tice which he sought to dis­credit. He was hos­tile to no man, but here was oc­cur­ring the in­ev­i­ta­ble clash be­tween a new and liv­ing re­li­gion of the spirit and the older re­li­gion of cer­e­mony, tra­di­tion, and au­thor­ity.

142:7.4He next ex­plained that the “king­dom idea” was not the best way to il­lus­trate man’s re­la­tion to God; that he em­ployed such fig­ures of speech be­cause the Jew­ish peo­ple were ex­pect­ing the king­dom, and be­cause John had preached in terms of the com­ing king­dom. Je­sus said: “The peo­ple of an­other age will bet­ter un­der­stand the gospel of the king­dom when it is pre­sented in terms ex­pres­sive of the fam­ily re­la­tion­ship—when man un­der­stands re­li­gion as the teach­ing of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man, son­ship with God.” Then the Mas­ter dis­coursed at some length on the earthly fam­ily as an il­lus­tra­tion of the heav­enly fam­ily, re­stat­ing the two fun­da­men­tal laws of liv­ing: the first com­mand­ment of love for the fa­ther, the head of the fam­ily, and the sec­ond com­mand­ment of mu­tual love among the chil­dren, to love your brother as your­self. And then he ex­plained that such a qual­ity of broth­erly af­fec­tion would in­vari­ably man­i­fest it­self in un­selfish and lov­ing so­cial ser­vice.

170:5.20It is just be­cause the gospel of Je­sus was so many-sided that within a few cen­turies stu­dents of the rec­ords of his teach­ings be­came di­vided up into so many cults and sects. This piti­ful sub­di­vi­sion of Chris­tian be­liev­ers re­sults from fail­ure to dis­cern in the Mas­ter’s man­i­fold teach­ings the di­vine one­ness of his match­less life. But some­day the true be­liev­ers in Je­sus will not be thus spir­i­tu­ally di­vided in their at­ti­tude be­fore un­be­liev­ers. Al­ways we may have di­ver­sity of in­tel­lec­tual com­pre­hen­sion and in­ter­pre­ta­tion, even vary­ing de­grees of so­cial­iza­tion, but lack of spir­i­tual broth­er­hood is both in­ex­cus­able and rep­re­hen­si­ble.

97:5.5Micah de­nounced “the rulers who judge for re­ward and the priests who teach for hire and the proph­ets who di­vine for money.” He taught of a day of free­dom from su­per­sti­tion and priestcraft, say­ing: “But ev­ery man shall sit un­der his own vine, and no one shall make him afraid, for all peo­ple will live, each one ac­cord­ing to his un­der­stand­ing of God.”

118:8.10As man shakes off the shack­les of fear, as he bridges con­ti­nents and oceans with his ma­chines, gen­er­a­tions and cen­turies with his rec­ords, he must sub­sti­tute for each tran­scended re­straint a new and vol­un­tar­ily as­sumed re­straint in ac­cor­dance with the moral dic­tates of ex­pand­ing hu­man wis­dom. These self-im­posed re­straints are at once the most pow­er­ful and the most ten­u­ous of all the fac­tors of hu­man civ­i­liza­tion—con­cepts of jus­tice and ide­als of broth­er­hood. Man even qual­i­fies him­self for the re­strain­ing gar­ments of mercy when he dares to love his fel­low men, while he achieves the be­gin­nings of spir­i­tual broth­er­hood when he elects to mete out to them that treat­ment which he him­self would be ac­corded, even that treat­ment which he con­ceives that God would ac­cord them.

175:1.2“In ev­ery man­ner con­sis­tent with do­ing my Fa­ther’s will, I and my apos­tles have done our ut­most to live in peace with our breth­ren, to con­form with the rea­son­able re­quire­ments of the laws of Moses and the tra­di­tions of Is­rael. We have per­sis­tently sought peace, but the lead­ers of Is­rael will not have it. By re­ject­ing the truth of God and the light of heaven, they are align­ing them­selves on the side of er­ror and dark­ness. There can­not be peace be­tween light and dark­ness, be­tween life and death, be­tween truth and er­ror.

16:9.8Un­selfish so­cial con­scious­ness must be, at bot­tom, a re­li­gious con­scious­ness; that is, if it is ob­jec­tive; oth­er­wise it is a purely sub­jec­tive philo­sophic ab­strac­tion and there­fore de­void of love. Only a God-know­ing in­di­vid­ual can love an­other per­son as he loves him­self.