child-rearing

• indispensable parent-child relation

45:6.4No sur­viv­ing mor­tal, mid­wayer, or ser­a­phim may as­cend to Par­a­dise, at­tain the Fa­ther, and be mus­tered into the Corps of the Fi­nal­ity with­out hav­ing passed through that sub­lime ex­pe­ri­ence of achiev­ing pa­ren­tal re­la­tion­ship to an evolv­ing child of the worlds or some other ex­pe­ri­ence anal­o­gous and equiv­a­lent thereto. The re­la­tion­ship of child and par­ent is fun­da­men­tal to the es­sen­tial con­cept of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and his uni­verse chil­dren. There­fore does such an ex­pe­ri­ence be­come in­dis­pens­able to the ex­pe­ri­en­tial train­ing of all as­cend­ers.

• no ascending mortal can escape experience of

47:1.6No as­cend­ing mor­tal can es­cape the ex­pe­ri­ence of rear­ing chil­dren—their own or oth­ers—ei­ther on the ma­te­rial worlds or sub­se­quently on the fi­nal­i­ter world or on Je­ru­sem. Fa­thers must pass through this es­sen­tial ex­pe­ri­ence just as cer­tainly as moth­ers. It is an un­for­tu­nate and mis­taken no­tion of mod­ern peo­ples on Uran­tia that child cul­ture is largely the task of moth­ers. Chil­dren need fa­thers as well as moth­ers, and fa­thers need this pa­ren­tal ex­pe­ri­ence as much as do moth­ers.

• children › best if close in ages

55:3.10On these su­perb worlds the child­bear­ing pe­riod is not greatly pro­longed. It is not best for too many years to in­ter­vene be­tween the ages of a fam­ily of chil­dren. When close to­gether in age, chil­dren are able to con­tribute much more to their mu­tual train­ing. And on these worlds they are mag­nif­i­cently trained by the com­pet­i­tive sys­tems of keen striv­ing in the ad­vanced do­mains and di­vi­sions of di­verse achieve­ment in the mas­tery of truth, beauty, and good­ness. Never fear but that even such glo­ri­fied spheres pre­sent plenty of evil, real and po­ten­tial, which is stim­u­la­tive of the choos­ing be­tween truth and er­ror, good and evil, sin and righ­teous­ness.

• children › discipline favorable; love restrains unwise acts

66:7.5The Prince’s staff lived to­gether as fa­thers and moth­ers. True, they had no chil­dren of their own, but the fifty pat­tern homes of Dala­ma­tia never shel­tered less than five hun­dred adopted lit­tle ones as­sem­bled from the su­pe­rior fam­i­lies of the An­donic and San­gik races; many of these chil­dren were or­phans. They were fa­vored with the dis­ci­pline and train­ing of these super­par­ents; and then, af­ter three years in the schools of the Prince (they en­tered from thir­teen to fif­teen), they were el­i­gi­ble for mar­riage and ready to re­ceive their com­mis­sions as emis­saries of the Prince to the needy tribes of their re­spec­tive races.

• children › should honor parents

66:7.157. You shall not show dis­re­spect to your par­ents or to the el­ders of the tribe.

• historically › boys once raised by fathers, girls by mothers

70:8.1210. Age—youth and ma­tu­rity. Among the tribes the boy re­mained un­der the watch­care of his fa­ther as long as the fa­ther lived, while the girl was left in the care of her mother un­til mar­ried.

• historically › Romans’ sudden emancipation at age 21 harmful

71:1.22The great weak­ness in Ro­man civ­i­liza­tion, and a fac­tor in the ul­ti­mate col­lapse of the em­pire, was the sup­posed lib­eral and ad­vanced pro­vi­sion for the eman­ci­pa­tion of the boy at twenty-one and the un­con­di­tional re­lease of the girl so that she was at lib­erty to marry a man of her own choos­ing or to go abroad in the land to be­come im­moral. The harm to so­ci­ety con­sisted not in these re­forms them­selves but rather in the sud­den and ex­ten­sive man­ner of their adop­tion. The col­lapse of Rome in­di­cates what may be ex­pected when a state un­der­goes too rapid ex­ten­sion as­so­ci­ated with in­ter­nal de­gen­er­a­tion.

72:3.1On this con­ti­nent it is against the law for two fam­i­lies to live un­der the same roof. And since group dwellings have been out­lawed, most of the ten­e­ment type of build­ings have been de­mol­ished. But the un­mar­ried still live in clubs, ho­tels, and other group dwellings. The small­est home­site per­mit­ted must pro­vide fifty thou­sand square feet of land. All land and other prop­erty used for home pur­poses are free from tax­a­tion up to ten times the min­i­mum home­site al­lot­ment.

72:3.2The home life of this peo­ple has greatly im­proved dur­ing the last cen­tury. At­ten­dance of par­ents, both fa­thers and moth­ers, at the pa­ren­tal schools of child cul­ture is com­pul­sory. Even the agri­cul­tur­ists who re­side in small coun­try set­tle­ments carry on this work by cor­re­spon­dence, go­ing to the near-by cen­ters for oral in­struc­tion once in ten days—ev­ery two weeks, for they main­tain a five-day week.

72:3.3The av­er­age num­ber of chil­dren in each fam­ily is five, and they are un­der the full con­trol of their par­ents or, in case of the demise of one or both, un­der that of the guard­i­ans des­ig­nated by the pa­ren­tal courts. It is con­sid­ered a great honor for any fam­ily to be awarded the guardian­ship of a full or­phan. Com­pet­i­tive ex­am­i­na­tions are held among par­ents, and the or­phan is awarded to the home of those dis­play­ing the best pa­ren­tal qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

72:3.4These peo­ple re­gard the home as the ba­sic in­sti­tu­tion of their civ­i­liza­tion. It is ex­pected that the most valu­able part of a child’s ed­u­ca­tion and char­ac­ter train­ing will be se­cured from his par­ents and at home, and fa­thers de­vote al­most as much at­ten­tion to child cul­ture as do moth­ers.

72:3.5All sex in­struc­tion is ad­min­is­tered in the home by par­ents or by le­gal guard­i­ans. Moral in­struc­tion is of­fered by teach­ers dur­ing the rest pe­ri­ods in the school shops, but not so with re­li­gious train­ing, which is deemed to be the ex­clu­sive priv­i­lege of par­ents, re­li­gion be­ing looked upon as an in­te­gral part of home life. Purely re­li­gious in­struc­tion is given pub­licly only in the tem­ples of phi­los­o­phy, no such ex­clu­sively re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions as the Uran­tia churches hav­ing de­vel­oped among this peo­ple. In their phi­los­o­phy, re­li­gion is the striv­ing to know God and to man­i­fest love for one’s fel­lows through ser­vice for them, but this is not typ­i­cal of the re­li­gious sta­tus of the other na­tions on this planet. Re­li­gion is so en­tirely a fam­ily mat­ter among these peo­ple that there are no pub­lic places de­voted ex­clu­sively to re­li­gious as­sem­bly. Po­lit­i­cally, church and state, as Uran­tians are wont to say, are en­tirely sep­a­rate, but there is a strange over­lap­ping of re­li­gion and phi­los­o­phy.

72:3.6Un­til twenty years ago the spir­i­tual teach­ers (com­pa­ra­ble to Uran­tia pas­tors), who visit each fam­ily pe­ri­od­i­cally to ex­am­ine the chil­dren to as­cer­tain if they have been prop­erly in­structed by their par­ents, were un­der gov­ern­men­tal super­vi­sion. These spir­i­tual ad­vis­ers and ex­am­in­ers are now un­der the di­rec­tion of the newly cre­ated Foun­da­tion of Spir­i­tual Prog­ress, an in­sti­tu­tion sup­ported by vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tions. Pos­si­bly this in­sti­tu­tion may not fur­ther evolve un­til af­ter the ar­rival of a Par­a­dise Mag­is­te­rial Son.

72:3.7Chil­dren re­main legally sub­ject to their par­ents un­til they are fif­teen, when the first ini­ti­a­tion into civic re­spon­si­bil­ity is held. There­after, ev­ery five years for five suc­ces­sive pe­ri­ods sim­i­lar pub­lic ex­er­cises are held for such age groups at which their obli­ga­tions to par­ents are less­ened, while new civic and so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the state are as­sumed. Suf­frage is con­ferred at twenty, the right to marry with­out pa­ren­tal con­sent is not be­stowed un­til twenty-five, and chil­dren must leave home on reach­ing the age of thirty.

72:3.8Mar­riage and di­vorce laws are uni­form through­out the na­tion. Mar­riage be­fore twenty—the age of civil en­fran­chise­ment—is not per­mit­ted. Per­mis­sion to marry is only granted af­ter one year’s no­tice of in­ten­tion, and af­ter both bride and groom pre­sent cer­tifi­cates show­ing that they have been duly in­structed in the pa­ren­tal schools re­gard­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of mar­ried life.

72:3.9Di­vorce reg­u­la­tions are some­what lax, but de­crees of sep­a­ra­tion, is­sued by the pa­ren­tal courts, may not be had un­til one year af­ter ap­pli­ca­tion there­for has been re­corded, and the year on this planet is con­sid­er­ably longer than on Uran­tia. Not­with­stand­ing their easy di­vorce laws, the pres­ent rate of di­vorces is only one tenth that of the civ­i­lized races of Uran­tia.

• warnings › bad environment can spoil excellent inheritance, at least during younger years

76:2.6The ob­ser­va­tion of Abel’s con­duct es­tab­lishes the value of en­vi­ron­ment and ed­u­ca­tion as fac­tors in char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment. Abel had an ideal in­her­i­tance, and hered­ity lies at the bot­tom of all char­ac­ter; but the in­flu­ence of an in­fe­rior en­vi­ron­ment vir­tu­ally neu­tral­ized this mag­nif­i­cent in­her­i­tance. Abel, es­pe­cially dur­ing his younger years, was greatly in­flu­enced by his un­fa­vor­able sur­round­ings. He would have be­come an en­tirely dif­fer­ent per­son had he lived to be twenty-five or thirty; his su­perb in­her­i­tance would then have shown it­self. While a good en­vi­ron­ment can­not con­tribute much to­ward re­ally over­com­ing the char­ac­ter hand­i­caps of a base hered­ity, a bad en­vi­ron­ment can very ef­fec­tively spoil an ex­cel­lent in­her­i­tance, at least dur­ing the younger years of life. Good so­cial en­vi­ron­ment and proper ed­u­ca­tion are in­dis­pens­able soil and at­mo­sphere for get­ting the most out of a good in­her­i­tance.

• historically › Adamite practices

76:3.9The home life of the vi­o­let peo­ples was, for their day and age, ideal. Chil­dren were sub­jected to courses of train­ing in agri­cul­ture, crafts­man­ship, and an­i­mal hus­bandry or else were ed­u­cated to per­form the three­fold duty of a Sethite: to be priest, physi­cian, and teacher.

• indispensable parent-child relation

84:7.41. The new role of re­li­gion—the teach­ing that pa­ren­tal ex­pe­ri­ence is es­sen­tial, the idea of pro­cre­at­ing cos­mic cit­i­zens, the en­larged un­der­stand­ing of the priv­i­lege of pro­cre­ation—giv­ing sons to the Fa­ther.

• warnings › insubordination caused by protecting children from consequences of foolish conduct

84:7.20Among an­cient sav­ages, dis­ci­pline of chil­dren was be­gun very early; and the child early re­al­ized that dis­obe­di­ence meant fail­ure or even death just as it did to the an­i­mals. It is civ­i­liza­tion’s pro­tec­tion of the child from the nat­u­ral con­se­quences of fool­ish con­duct that con­tributes so much to mod­ern in­sub­or­di­na­tion.

• difficult now

84:7.21Es­kimo chil­dren thrive on so lit­tle dis­ci­pline and cor­rec­tion sim­ply be­cause they are nat­u­rally docile lit­tle an­i­mals; the chil­dren of both the red and the yel­low men are al­most equally tractable. But in races con­tain­ing And­ite in­her­i­tance, chil­dren are not so placid; these more imag­i­na­tive and ad­ven­tur­ous youths re­quire more train­ing and dis­ci­pline. Mod­ern prob­lems of child cul­ture are ren­dered in­creas­ingly dif­fi­cult by:

84:7.221. The large de­gree of race mix­ture.

84:7.232. Ar­ti­fi­cial and su­per­fi­cial ed­u­ca­tion.

84:7.243. In­abil­ity of the child to gain cul­ture by im­i­tat­ing par­ents—the par­ents are ab­sent from the fam­ily pic­ture so much of the time.

• parents’ attitude › having children entails supreme responsibility

84:7.25The olden ideas of fam­ily dis­ci­pline were bi­o­logic, grow­ing out of the re­al­iza­tion that par­ents were cre­ators of the child’s be­ing. The ad­vanc­ing ide­als of fam­ily life are lead­ing to the con­cept that bring­ing a child into the world, in­stead of con­fer­ring cer­tain pa­ren­tal rights, en­tails the su­preme re­spon­si­bil­ity of hu­man ex­is­tence.

• parents’ attitude › assisting child to win battle of life

84:7.26Civ­i­liza­tion re­gards the par­ents as as­sum­ing all du­ties, the child as hav­ing all the rights. Re­spect of the child for his par­ents arises, not in knowl­edge of the obli­ga­tion im­plied in pa­ren­tal pro­cre­ation, but nat­u­rally grows as a re­sult of the care, train­ing, and af­fec­tion which are lov­ingly dis­played in as­sist­ing the child to win the bat­tle of life. The true par­ent is en­gaged in a con­tin­u­ous ser­vice-min­istry which the wise child comes to rec­og­nize and ap­pre­ci­ate.

• warnings › suicidal to shift responsibility to state or church

84:7.27In the pres­ent in­dus­trial and ur­ban era the mar­riage in­sti­tu­tion is evolv­ing along new eco­nomic lines. Fam­ily life has be­come more and more costly, while chil­dren, who used to be an as­set, have be­come eco­nomic li­a­bil­i­ties. But the se­cu­rity of civ­i­liza­tion it­self still rests on the grow­ing will­ing­ness of one gen­er­a­tion to in­vest in the wel­fare of the next and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. And any at­tempt to shift pa­ren­tal re­spon­si­bil­ity to state or church will prove sui­ci­dal to the wel­fare and ad­vance­ment of civ­i­liza­tion.

• children › religion depends on whether fear or love dominates parent-child relationship

92:7.11Re­li­gious mean­ings pro­gress in self-con­scious­ness when the child trans­fers his ideas of om­nipo­tence from his par­ents to God. And the en­tire re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of such a child is largely de­pen­dent on whether fear or love has dom­i­nated the par­ent-child re­la­tion­ship. Slaves have al­ways ex­pe­ri­enced great dif­fi­culty in trans­fer­ring their mas­ter-fear into con­cepts of God-love. Civ­i­liza­tion, sci­ence, and ad­vanced re­li­gions must de­liver man­kind from those fears born of the dread of nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena. And so should greater en­light­en­ment de­liver ed­u­cated mor­tals from all de­pen­dence on in­ter­me­di­aries in com­mu­nion with De­ity.

• children › should honor parents

93:4.137. You shall not show dis­re­spect for your par­ents and el­ders.

• warnings › do not force ready-made adult religious experience on child

100:1.3Give ev­ery de­vel­op­ing child a chance to grow his own re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence; do not force a ready-made adult ex­pe­ri­ence upon him. Re­mem­ber, year-by-year prog­ress through an es­tab­lished ed­u­ca­tional regime does not nec­es­sar­ily mean in­tel­lec­tual prog­ress, much less spir­i­tual growth. En­large­ment of vo­cab­u­lary does not sig­nify de­vel­op­ment of char­ac­ter. Growth is not truly in­di­cated by mere prod­ucts but rather by prog­ress. Real ed­u­ca­tional growth is in­di­cated by en­hance­ment of ide­als, in­creased ap­pre­ci­a­tion of val­ues, new mean­ings of val­ues, and aug­mented loy­alty to su­preme val­ues.

• children › permanently impressed only by adults’ loyalties

100:1.4Chil­dren are per­ma­nently im­pressed only by the loy­al­ties of their adult as­so­ciates; pre­cept or even ex­am­ple is not last­ingly in­flu­en­tial. Loyal per­sons are grow­ing per­sons, and growth is an im­pres­sive and in­spir­ing re­al­ity. Live loy­ally to­day—grow—and to­mor­row will at­tend to it­self. The quick­est way for a tad­pole to be­come a frog is to live loy­ally each mo­ment as a tad­pole.

• children › should grow up conscious of being God’s children

103:2.2But those per­sons who were so reared by their par­ents that they grew up in the con­scious­ness of be­ing chil­dren of a lov­ing heav­enly Fa­ther, should not look askance at their fel­low mor­tals who could only at­tain such con­scious­ness of fel­low­ship with God through a psy­cho­log­i­cal cri­sis, an emo­tional up­heaval.

• children › religion depends on whether fear or love dominates parent-child relationship
• parents’ attitude › nurture early moral awakenings

103:2.3The evo­lu­tion­ary soil in the mind of man in which the seed of re­vealed re­li­gion ger­mi­nates is the moral na­ture that so early gives ori­gin to a so­cial con­scious­ness. The first prompt­ings of a child’s moral na­ture have not to do with sex, guilt, or per­sonal pride, but rather with im­pulses of jus­tice, fair­ness, and urges to kind­ness—help­ful min­istry to one’s fel­lows. And when such early moral awak­en­ings are nur­tured, there oc­curs a grad­ual de­vel­op­ment of the re­li­gious life which is com­par­a­tively free from con­flicts, up­heavals, and crises.

103:2.4Ev­ery hu­man be­ing very early ex­pe­ri­ences some­thing of a con­flict be­tween his self-seek­ing and his al­tru­is­tic im­pulses, and many times the first ex­pe­ri­ence of God-con­scious­ness may be at­tained as the re­sult of seek­ing for super­hu­man help in the task of re­solv­ing such moral con­flicts.

103:2.5The psy­chol­ogy of a child is nat­u­rally pos­i­tive, not neg­a­tive. So many mor­tals are neg­a­tive be­cause they were so trained. When it is said that the child is pos­i­tive, ref­er­ence is made to his moral im­pulses, those pow­ers of mind whose emer­gence sig­nals the ar­rival of the Thought Ad­juster.

103:2.6In the ab­sence of wrong teach­ing, the mind of the nor­mal child moves pos­i­tively, in the emer­gence of re­li­gious con­scious­ness, to­ward moral righ­teous­ness and so­cial min­istry, rather than neg­a­tively, away from sin and guilt. There may or may not be con­flict in the de­vel­op­ment of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, but there are al­ways pres­ent the in­ev­i­ta­ble de­ci­sions, ef­fort, and func­tion of the hu­man will.

103:2.7Moral choos­ing is usu­ally ac­com­pa­nied by more or less moral con­flict. And this very first con­flict in the child mind is be­tween the urges of ego­ism and the im­pulses of al­tru­ism. The Thought Ad­juster does not dis­re­gard the per­son­al­ity val­ues of the ego­is­tic mo­tive but does op­er­ate to place a slight pref­er­ence upon the al­tru­is­tic im­pulse as lead­ing to the goal of hu­man hap­pi­ness and to the joys of the king­dom of heaven.

103:2.8When a moral be­ing chooses to be un­selfish when con­fronted by the urge to be self­ish, that is prim­i­tive re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. No an­i­mal can make such a choice; such a de­ci­sion is both hu­man and re­li­gious. It em­braces the fact of God-con­scious­ness and ex­hibits the im­pulse of so­cial ser­vice, the ba­sis of the broth­er­hood of man. When mind chooses a right moral judg­ment by an act of the free will, such a de­ci­sion con­sti­tutes a re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

103:2.9But be­fore a child has de­vel­oped suf­fi­ciently to ac­quire moral ca­pac­ity and there­fore to be able to choose al­tru­is­tic ser­vice, he has al­ready de­vel­oped a strong and well-uni­fied ego­is­tic na­ture. And it is this fac­tual sit­u­a­tion that gives rise to the the­ory of the strug­gle be­tween the “higher” and the “lower” na­tures, be­tween the “old man of sin” and the “new na­ture” of grace. Very early in life the nor­mal child be­gins to learn that it is “more blessed to give than to re­ceive.”

103:2.10Man tends to iden­tify the urge to be self-serv­ing with his ego—him­self. In con­trast he is in­clined to iden­tify the will to be al­tru­is­tic with some in­flu­ence out­side him­self—God. And in­deed is such a judg­ment right, for all such non­self de­sires do ac­tu­ally have their ori­gin in the lead­ings of the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster, and this Ad­juster is a frag­ment of God. The im­pulse of the spirit Mon­i­tor is re­al­ized in hu­man con­scious­ness as the urge to be al­tru­is­tic, fel­low-crea­ture minded. At least this is the early and fun­da­men­tal ex­pe­ri­ence of the child mind. When the grow­ing child fails of per­son­al­ity uni­fi­ca­tion, the al­tru­is­tic drive may be­come so overde­vel­oped as to work se­ri­ous in­jury to the wel­fare of the self. A mis­guided con­science can be­come re­spon­si­ble for much con­flict, worry, sor­row, and no end of hu­man un­hap­pi­ness.

• warnings › pressure unhelpful; does not stimulate growth

103:5.11But man is not saved or en­no­bled by pres­sure. Spirit growth springs from within the evolv­ing soul. Pres­sure may de­form the per­son­al­ity, but it never stim­u­lates growth. Even ed­u­ca­tional pres­sure is only neg­a­tively help­ful in that it may aid in the pre­ven­tion of dis­as­trous ex­pe­ri­ences. Spir­i­tual growth is great­est where all ex­ter­nal pres­sures are at a min­i­mum. “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is free­dom.” Man de­vel­ops best when the pres­sures of home, com­mu­nity, church, and state are least. But this must not be con­strued as mean­ing that there is no place in a pro­gres­sive so­ci­ety for home, so­cial in­sti­tu­tions, church, and state.

• warnings › shortsighted affection pampers and spoils

118:10.1Prov­i­dence does not mean that God has de­cided all things for us and in ad­vance. God loves us too much to do that, for that would be noth­ing short of cos­mic tyranny. Man does have rel­a­tive pow­ers of choice. Nei­ther is the di­vine love that short­sighted af­fec­tion which would pam­per and spoil the chil­dren of men.

• historically › John told he was to become a spiritual leader

122:2.8From his ear­li­est in­fancy John was ju­di­ciously im­pressed by his par­ents with the idea that he was to grow up to be­come a spir­i­tual leader and re­li­gious teacher. And the soil of John’s heart was ever re­spon­sive to the sow­ing of such sug­ges­tive seeds. Even as a child he was found fre­quently at the tem­ple dur­ing the sea­sons of his fa­ther’s ser­vice, and he was tremen­dously im­pressed with the sig­nif­i­cance of all that he saw.

• warnings › overprotection makes child self-conscious, self-centered

123:0.2All through these early years of Je­sus’ help­less in­fancy, Mary main­tained one long and con­stant vigil lest any­thing be­fall her child which might jeop­ar­dize his wel­fare or in any way in­ter­fere with his fu­ture mis­sion on earth; no mother was ever more de­voted to her child. In the home where Je­sus chanced to be there were two other chil­dren about his age, and among the near neigh­bors there were six oth­ers whose ages were suf­fi­ciently near his own to make them ac­cept­able play-fel­lows. At first Mary was dis­posed to keep Je­sus close by her side. She feared some­thing might hap­pen to him if he were al­lowed to play in the gar­den with the other chil­dren, but Joseph, with the as­sis­tance of his kins­folk, was able to con­vince her that such a course would de­prive Je­sus of the help­ful ex­pe­ri­ence of learn­ing how to ad­just him­self to chil­dren of his own age. And Mary, re­al­iz­ing that such a pro­gram of un­due shel­ter­ing and un­usual pro­tec­tion might tend to make him self-con­scious and some­what self-cen­tered, fi­nally gave as­sent to the plan of per­mit­ting the child of prom­ise to grow up just like any other child; and though she was obe­di­ent to this de­ci­sion, she made it her busi­ness al­ways to be on watch while the lit­tle folks were at play about the house or in the gar­den. Only an af­fec­tion­ate mother can know the bur­den that Mary car­ried in her heart for the safety of her son dur­ing these years of his in­fancy and early child­hood.

• historically › Joseph explained reasons for family discipline

123:3.9This year Je­sus made great prog­ress in ad­just­ing his strong feel­ings and vig­or­ous im­pulses to the de­mands of fam­ily co-op­er­a­tion and home dis­ci­pline. Mary was a lov­ing mother but a fairly strict dis­ci­plinar­ian. In many ways, how­ever, Joseph ex­erted the greater con­trol over Je­sus as it was his prac­tice to sit down with the boy and fully ex­plain the real and un­der­ly­ing rea­sons for the ne­ces­sity of dis­ci­plinary cur­tail­ment of per­sonal de­sires in def­er­ence to the wel­fare and tran­quil­lity of the en­tire fam­ily. When the sit­u­a­tion had been ex­plained to Je­sus, he was al­ways in­tel­li­gently and will­ingly co-op­er­a­tive with pa­ren­tal wishes and fam­ily reg­u­la­tions.

• historically › Galilee was splendid environment for c.-r.

124:0.1Al­though Je­sus might have en­joyed a bet­ter op­por­tu­nity for school­ing at Alexan­dria than in Gal­i­lee, he could not have had such a splen­did en­vi­ron­ment for work­ing out his own life prob­lems with a min­i­mum of ed­u­ca­tional guid­ance, at the same time en­joy­ing the great ad­van­tage of con­stantly con­tact­ing with such a large num­ber of all classes of men and women hail­ing from ev­ery part of the civ­i­lized world. Had he re­mained at Alexan­dria, his ed­u­ca­tion would have been di­rected by Jews and along ex­clu­sively Jew­ish lines. At Naz­a­reth he se­cured an ed­u­ca­tion and re­ceived a train­ing which more ac­cept­ably pre­pared him to un­der­stand the gen­tiles, and which gave him a bet­ter and more bal­anced idea of the rel­a­tive mer­its of the East­ern, or Baby­lo­nian, and the West­ern, or Hel­lenic, views of He­brew the­ol­ogy.

• parents’ attitude › watchcare of family takes precedence of all duties

126:3.5This year Je­sus was much trou­bled with con­fused think­ing. Fam­ily re­spon­si­bil­ity had quite ef­fec­tively re­moved all thought of im­me­di­ately car­ry­ing out any plan for re­spond­ing to the Je­ru­sa­lem vis­i­ta­tion di­rect­ing him to “be about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness.” Je­sus rightly rea­soned that the watch­care of his earthly fa­ther’s fam­ily must take prece­dence of all du­ties; that the sup­port of his fam­ily must be­come his first obli­ga­tion.

• Jesus’ practices › children had regular duties in Jesus’ household

126:5.11At one time Je­sus faintly hoped that he might be able to gather up suf­fi­cient means, pro­vided they could col­lect the con­sid­er­able sum of money due his fa­ther for work on Herod’s palace, to war­rant un­der­tak­ing the pur­chase of a small farm. He had re­ally given se­ri­ous thought to this plan of mov­ing his fam­ily out into the coun­try. But when Herod re­fused to pay them any of the funds due Joseph, they gave up the am­bi­tion of own­ing a home in the coun­try. As it was, they con­trived to en­joy much of the ex­pe­ri­ence of farm life as they now had three cows, four sheep, a flock of chick­ens, a don­key, and a dog, in ad­di­tion to the doves. Even the lit­tle tots had their reg­u­lar du­ties to per­form in the well-reg­u­lated scheme of man­age­ment which char­ac­ter­ized the home life of this Naz­a­reth fam­ily.

• Jesus’ practices › Jesus spent every possible hour with youngsters

127:1.8He was a real though youth­ful fa­ther to the fam­ily; he spent ev­ery pos­si­ble hour with the young­sters, and they truly loved him. His mother grieved to see him work so hard; she sor­rowed that he was day by day toil­ing at the car­pen­ter’s bench earn­ing a liv­ing for the fam­ily in­stead of be­ing, as they had so fondly planned, at Je­ru­sa­lem study­ing with the rab­bis. While there was much about her son that Mary could not un­der­stand, she did love him, and she most thor­oughly ap­pre­ci­ated the will­ing man­ner in which he shoul­dered the re­spon­si­bil­ity of the home.

• parents’ attitude › enjoin good rather than forbid evil

127:4.2By the be­gin­ning of this year Je­sus had fully won his mother to the ac­cep­tance of his meth­ods of child train­ing—the pos­i­tive in­junc­tion to do good in the place of the older Jew­ish method of for­bid­ding to do evil. In his home and through­out his pub­lic-teach­ing ca­reer Je­sus in­vari­ably em­ployed the pos­i­tive form of ex­hor­ta­tion. Al­ways and ev­ery­where did he say, “You shall do this—you ought to do that.” Never did he em­ploy the neg­a­tive mode of teach­ing de­rived from the an­cient taboos. He re­frained from plac­ing em­pha­sis on evil by for­bid­ding it, while he ex­alted the good by com­mand­ing its per­for­mance. Prayer time in this house­hold was the oc­ca­sion for dis­cussing any­thing and ev­ery­thing re­lat­ing to the wel­fare of the fam­ily.

• children › discipline favorable; love restrains unwise acts
• Jesus’ practices › early discipline made punishment seldom required

127:4.3Je­sus be­gan wise dis­ci­pline upon his broth­ers and sis­ters at such an early age that lit­tle or no pun­ish­ment was ever re­quired to se­cure their prompt and whole­hearted obe­di­ence. The only ex­cep­tion was Jude, upon whom on sundry oc­ca­sions Je­sus found it nec­es­sary to im­pose penal­ties for his in­frac­tions of the rules of the home. On three oc­ca­sions when it was deemed wise to pun­ish Jude for self-con­fessed and de­lib­er­ate vi­o­la­tions of the fam­ily rules of con­duct, his pun­ish­ment was fixed by the unan­i­mous de­cree of the older chil­dren and was as­sented to by Jude him­self be­fore it was in­flicted.

127:4.4While Je­sus was most me­thod­i­cal and sys­tem­atic in ev­ery­thing he did, there was also in all his ad­min­is­tra­tive rul­ings a re­fresh­ing elas­tic­ity of in­ter­pre­ta­tion and an in­di­vid­u­al­ity of adap­ta­tion that greatly im­pressed all the chil­dren with the spirit of jus­tice which ac­tu­ated their fa­ther-brother. He never ar­bi­trar­ily dis­ci­plined his broth­ers and sis­ters, and such uni­form fair­ness and per­sonal con­sid­er­a­tion greatly en­deared Je­sus to all his fam­ily.

• Jesus’ practices › no penalty for violation of personal teachings

127:4.5James and Si­mon grew up try­ing to fol­low Je­sus’ plan of pla­cat­ing their bel­li­cose and some­times irate play­mates by per­sua­sion and non­re­sis­tance, and they were fairly suc­cess­ful; but Joseph and Jude, while as­sent­ing to such teach­ings at home, made haste to de­fend them­selves when as­sailed by their com­rades; in par­tic­u­lar was Jude guilty of vi­o­lat­ing the spirit of these teach­ings. But non­re­sis­tance was not a rule of the fam­ily. No penalty was at­tached to the vi­o­la­tion of per­sonal teach­ings.

127:4.6In gen­eral, all of the chil­dren, par­tic­u­larly the girls, would con­sult Je­sus about their child­hood trou­bles and con­fide in him just as they would have in an af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther.

• warnings › never take sides in children’s quarrels; show no partiality

128:1.14This year Je­sus went up to Je­ru­sa­lem with Joseph to cel­e­brate the Pass­over. Hav­ing taken James to the tem­ple for con­se­cra­tion, he deemed it his duty to take Joseph. Je­sus never ex­hib­ited any de­gree of par­tial­ity in deal­ing with his fam­ily. He went with Joseph to Je­ru­sa­lem by the usual Jor­dan val­ley route, but he re­turned to Naz­a­reth by the east Jor­dan way, which led through Am­athus. Go­ing down the Jor­dan, Je­sus nar­rated Jew­ish his­tory to Joseph and on the re­turn trip told him about the ex­pe­ri­ences of the re­puted tribes of Ruben, Gad, and Gilead that tra­di­tion­ally had dwelt in these re­gions east of the river.

• children › should honor parents

131:2.12“Says God, the cre­ator of heaven and earth: ‘Great peace have they who love my law. My com­mand­ments are: You shall love me with all your heart; you shall have no gods be­fore me; you shall not take my name in vain; re­mem­ber the Sab­bath day to keep it holy; honor your fa­ther and mother; you shall not kill; you shall not com­mit adul­tery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false wit­ness; you shall not covet.’

• warnings › John Zebedee humored too much; spoiled

139:4.5The strong­est trait in John’s char­ac­ter was his de­pend­abil­ity; he was prompt and coura­geous, faith­ful and de­voted. His great­est weak­ness was this char­ac­ter­is­tic con­ceit. He was the young­est mem­ber of his fa­ther’s fam­ily and the young­est of the apos­tolic group. Per­haps he was just a bit spoiled; maybe he had been hu­mored slightly too much. But the John of af­ter years was a very dif­fer­ent type of per­son than the self-ad­mir­ing and ar­bi­trary young man who joined the ranks of Je­sus’ apos­tles when he was twenty-four.

• parents’ attitude › “come with me” most effective technique

139:5.8The apos­tolic stew­ard was not a good pub­lic speaker, but he was a very per­sua­sive and suc­cess­ful per­sonal worker. He was not eas­ily dis­cour­aged; he was a plod­der and very tena­cious in any­thing he un­der­took. He had that great and rare gift of say­ing, “Come.” When his first con­vert, Na­than­iel, wanted to ar­gue about the mer­its and de­mer­its of Je­sus and Naz­a­reth, Philip’s ef­fec­tive re­ply was, “Come and see.” He was not a dog­matic preacher who ex­horted his hear­ers to “Go”—do this and do that. He met all sit­u­a­tions as they arose in his work with “Come”—“come with me; I will show you the way.” And that is al­ways the ef­fec­tive tech­nique in all forms and phases of teach­ing. Even par­ents may learn from Philip the bet­ter way of say­ing to their chil­dren not “Go do this and go do that,” but rather, “Come with us while we show and share with you the bet­ter way.”

• warnings › Judas was pampered, petted, spoiled

139:12.6Ju­das was an only son of un­wise par­ents. When very young, he was pam­pered and pet­ted; he was a spoiled child. As he grew up, he had ex­ag­ger­ated ideas about his self-im­por­tance. He was a poor loser. He had loose and dis­torted ideas about fair­ness; he was given to the in­dul­gence of hate and sus­pi­cion. He was an ex­pert at mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the words and acts of his friends. All through his life Ju­das had cul­ti­vated the habit of get­ting even with those whom he fan­cied had mis­treated him. His sense of val­ues and loy­al­ties was de­fec­tive.

• parents’ attitude › enjoin good rather than forbid evil

140:5.9Ex­pe­ri­en­tial righ­teous­ness is a plea­sure, not a duty. Je­sus’ righ­teous­ness is a dy­namic love—fa­therly-broth­erly af­fec­tion. It is not the neg­a­tive or thou-shalt-not type of righ­teous­ness. How could one ever hunger for some­thing neg­a­tive—some­thing “not to do”?

• children › help select heroes and lifework
• warnings › avoid all deception; refrain from suspicion

140:5.14It is easy to teach this ad­mo­ni­tion even to a child. Chil­dren are nat­u­rally trust­ful, and par­ents should see to it that they do not lose that sim­ple faith. In deal­ing with chil­dren, avoid all de­cep­tion and re­frain from sug­gest­ing sus­pi­cion. Wisely help them to choose their heroes and se­lect their life­work.

• warnings › error to teach boys tenderness is unmanly

140:5.161. “Happy are they who mourn, for they shall be com­forted.” So-called com­mon sense or the best of logic would never sug­gest that hap­pi­ness could be de­rived from mourn­ing. But Je­sus did not re­fer to out­ward or os­ten­ta­tious mourn­ing. He al­luded to an emo­tional at­ti­tude of ten­der­heart­ed­ness. It is a great er­ror to teach boys and young men that it is un­manly to show ten­der­ness or oth­er­wise to give ev­i­dence of emo­tional feel­ing or phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing. Sym­pa­thy is a wor­thy at­tri­bute of the male as well as the fe­male. It is not nec­es­sary to be cal­loused in or­der to be manly. This is the wrong way to cre­ate coura­geous men. The world’s great men have not been afraid to mourn. Moses, the mourner, was a greater man than ei­ther Sam­son or Go­liath. Moses was a su­perb leader, but he was also a man of meek­ness. Be­ing sen­si­tive and re­spon­sive to hu­man need cre­ates gen­uine and last­ing hap­pi­ness, while such kindly at­ti­tudes safe­guard the soul from the de­struc­tive in­flu­ences of anger, hate, and sus­pi­cion.

• warnings › never take sides in children’s quarrels; show no partiality

141:3.3An­drew was much oc­cu­pied with the task of ad­just­ing the con­stantly re­cur­ring mis­un­der­stand­ings and dis­agree­ments be­tween the dis­ci­ples of John and the newer dis­ci­ples of Je­sus. Se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tions would arise ev­ery few days, but An­drew, with the as­sis­tance of his apos­tolic as­so­ciates, man­aged to in­duce the con­tend­ing par­ties to come to some sort of agree­ment, at least tem­porar­ily. Je­sus re­fused to par­tic­i­pate in any of these con­fer­ences; nei­ther would he give any ad­vice about the proper ad­just­ment of these dif­fi­cul­ties. He never once of­fered a sug­ges­tion as to how the apos­tles should solve these per­plex­ing prob­lems. When An­drew came to Je­sus with these ques­tions, he would al­ways say: “It is not wise for the host to par­tic­i­pate in the fam­ily trou­bles of his guests; a wise par­ent never takes sides in the petty quar­rels of his own chil­dren.”

• children › discipline favorable; love restrains unwise acts
• children › punishment necessary when very young

142:2.4Then Je­sus went on to say: “When your chil­dren are very young and im­ma­ture, and when you must chas­tise them, they may re­flect that their fa­ther is an­gry and filled with re­sent­ful wrath. Their im­ma­tu­rity can­not pen­e­trate be­yond the pun­ish­ment to dis­cern the fa­ther’s farsee­ing and cor­rec­tive af­fec­tion. But when these same chil­dren be­come grown-up men and women, would it not be folly for them to cling to these ear­lier and mis­con­ceived no­tions re­gard­ing their fa­ther? As men and women they should now dis­cern their fa­ther’s love in all these early dis­ci­plines. And should not man­kind, as the cen­turies pass, come the bet­ter to un­der­stand the true na­ture and lov­ing char­ac­ter of the Fa­ther in heaven? What profit have you from suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions of spir­i­tual il­lu­mi­na­tion if you per­sist in view­ing God as Moses and the proph­ets saw him? I say to you, Ja­cob, un­der the bright light of this hour you should see the Fa­ther as none of those who have gone be­fore ever be­held him. And thus see­ing him, you should re­joice to en­ter the king­dom wherein such a mer­ci­ful Fa­ther rules, and you should seek to have his will of love dom­i­nate your life hence­forth.”

• parents’ attitude › wise fathers carefully plan children’s education

142:7.83. Ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing. Wise fa­thers care­fully plan for the ed­u­ca­tion and ad­e­quate train­ing of their sons and daugh­ters. When young they are pre­pared for the greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of later life.

• children › discipline favorable; love restrains unwise acts

142:7.94. Dis­ci­pline and re­straint. Farsee­ing fa­thers also make pro­vi­sion for the nec­es­sary dis­ci­pline, guid­ance, cor­rec­tion, and some­times re­straint of their young and im­ma­ture off­spring.

• children › discipline favorable; love restrains unwise acts

143:1.4“I have come into this world to do the will of my Fa­ther and to re­veal his lov­ing char­ac­ter to all man­kind. That, my breth­ren, is my mis­sion. And this one thing I will do, re­gard­less of the mis­un­der­stand­ing of my teach­ings by Jews or gen­tiles of this day or of an­other gen­er­a­tion. But you should not over­look the fact that even di­vine love has its se­vere dis­ci­plines. A fa­ther’s love for his son of­ten­times im­pels the fa­ther to re­strain the un­wise acts of his thought­less off­spring. The child does not al­ways com­pre­hend the wise and lov­ing mo­tives of the fa­ther’s re­strain­ing dis­ci­pline. But I de­clare to you that my Fa­ther in Par­a­dise does rule a uni­verse of uni­verses by the com­pelling power of his love. Love is the great­est of all spirit re­al­i­ties. Truth is a lib­er­at­ing rev­e­la­tion, but love is the su­preme re­la­tion­ship. And no mat­ter what blun­ders your fel­low men make in their world man­age­ment of to­day, in an age to come the gospel which I de­clare to you will rule this very world. The ul­ti­mate goal of hu­man prog­ress is the rev­er­ent rec­og­ni­tion of the fa­ther­hood of God and the lov­ing ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion of the broth­er­hood of man.

• warnings › overindulgence adds to delinquency and demoralization; encompasses moral undoing

147:5.9But Je­sus earnestly warned his apos­tles against the fool­ish­ness of the child of God who pre­sumes upon the Fa­ther’s love. He de­clared that the heav­enly Fa­ther is not a lax, loose, or fool­ishly in­dul­gent par­ent who is ever ready to con­done sin and for­give reck­less­ness. He cau­tioned his hear­ers not mis­tak­enly to ap­ply his il­lus­tra­tions of fa­ther and son so as to make it ap­pear that God is like some overindul­gent and un­wise par­ents who con­spire with the fool­ish of earth to en­com­pass the moral un­do­ing of their thought­less chil­dren, and who are thereby cer­tainly and di­rectly con­tribut­ing to the delin­quency and early de­mor­al­iza­tion of their own off­spring. Said Je­sus: “My Fa­ther does not in­dul­gently con­done those acts and prac­tices of his chil­dren which are self-de­struc­tive and sui­ci­dal to all moral growth and spir­i­tual prog­ress. Such sin­ful prac­tices are an abom­i­na­tion in the sight of God.”

• children › should honor parents

149:6.6“When chil­dren are young and un­think­ing, they must nec­es­sar­ily be ad­mon­ished to honor their par­ents; but when they grow older and be­come some­what more ap­pre­cia­tive of the ben­e­fits of the pa­ren­tal min­istry and pro­tec­tion, they are led up, through un­der­stand­ing re­spect and in­creas­ing af­fec­tion, to that level of ex­pe­ri­ence where they ac­tu­ally love their par­ents for what they are more than for what they have done. The fa­ther nat­u­rally loves his child, but the child must de­velop his love for the fa­ther from the fear of what the fa­ther can do, through awe, dread, de­pen­dence, and rev­er­ence, to the ap­pre­cia­tive and af­fec­tion­ate re­gard of love.

• children › should honor parents

153:3.3Then one of the Je­ru­sa­lem spies who had been ob­serv­ing Je­sus and his apos­tles, said: “We no­tice that nei­ther you nor your apos­tles wash your hands prop­erly be­fore you eat bread. You must well know that such a prac­tice as eat­ing with de­filed and un­washed hands is a trans­gres­sion of the law of the el­ders. Nei­ther do you prop­erly wash your drink­ing cups and eat­ing ves­sels. Why is it that you show such dis­re­spect for the tra­di­tions of the fa­thers and the laws of our el­ders?” And when Je­sus heard him speak, he an­swered: “Why is it that you transgress the com­mand­ments of God by the laws of your tra­di­tion? The com­mand­ment says, ‘Honor your fa­ther and your mother,’ and di­rects that you share with them your sub­stance if nec­es­sary; but you en­act a law of tra­di­tion which per­mits un­du­ti­ful chil­dren to say that the money where­with the par­ents might have been as­sisted has been ‘given to God.’ The law of the el­ders thus re­lieves such crafty chil­dren of their re­spon­si­bil­ity, not­with­stand­ing that the chil­dren sub­se­quently use all such monies for their own com­fort. Why is it that you in this way make void the com­mand­ment by your own tra­di­tion? Well did Isa­iah proph­esy of you hyp­ocrites, say­ing: ‘This peo­ple hon­ors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they wor­ship me, teach­ing as their doc­trines the pre­cepts of men.’

• love in home essential
• parents’ attitude › appreciation essential to develop character

160:2.61. Mu­tual self-ex­pres­sion and self-un­der­stand­ing. Many no­ble hu­man im­pulses die be­cause there is no one to hear their ex­pres­sion. Truly, it is not good for man to be alone. Some de­gree of rec­og­ni­tion and a cer­tain amount of ap­pre­ci­a­tion are es­sen­tial to the de­vel­op­ment of hu­man char­ac­ter. With­out the gen­uine love of a home, no child can achieve the full de­vel­op­ment of nor­mal char­ac­ter. Char­ac­ter is some­thing more than mere mind and morals. Of all so­cial re­la­tions cal­cu­lated to de­velop char­ac­ter, the most ef­fec­tive and ideal is the af­fec­tion­ate and un­der­stand­ing friend­ship of man and woman in the mu­tual em­brace of in­tel­li­gent wed­lock. Mar­riage, with its man­i­fold re­la­tions, is best de­signed to draw forth those pre­cious im­pulses and those higher mo­tives which are in­dis­pens­able to the de­vel­op­ment of a strong char­ac­ter. I do not hes­i­tate thus to glo­rify fam­ily life, for your Mas­ter has wisely cho­sen the fa­ther-child re­la­tion­ship as the very cor­ner­stone of this new gospel of the king­dom. And such a match­less com­mu­nity of re­la­tion­ship, man and woman in the fond em­brace of the high­est ide­als of time, is so valu­able and sat­is­fy­ing an ex­pe­ri­ence that it is worth any price, any sac­ri­fice, req­ui­site for its pos­ses­sion.

• children › should honor parents

163:2.4Then An­drew brought to Je­sus a cer­tain rich young man who was a de­vout be­liever, and who de­sired to re­ceive or­di­na­tion. This young man, Mata­dor­mus, was a mem­ber of the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin; he had heard Je­sus teach and had been sub­se­quently in­structed in the gospel of the king­dom by Pe­ter and the other apos­tles. Je­sus talked with Mata­dor­mus con­cern­ing the re­quire­ments of or­di­na­tion and re­quested that he de­fer de­ci­sion un­til af­ter he had thought more fully about the mat­ter. Early the next morn­ing, as Je­sus was go­ing for a walk, this young man ac­costed him and said: “Mas­ter, I would know from you the as­sur­ances of eter­nal life. See­ing that I have ob­served all the com­mand­ments from my youth, I would like to know what more I must do to gain eter­nal life?” In an­swer to this ques­tion Je­sus said: “If you keep all the com­mand­ments—do not com­mit adul­tery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false wit­ness, do not de­fraud, honor your par­ents—you do well, but sal­va­tion is the re­ward of faith, not merely of works. Do you be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom?” And Mata­dor­mus an­swered: “Yes, Mas­ter, I do be­lieve ev­ery­thing you and your apos­tles have taught me.” And Je­sus said, “Then are you in­deed my dis­ci­ple and a child of the king­dom.”

• children › introduce to worship in nature’s outdoors

167:6.6When it is not pos­si­ble to wor­ship God in the taber­na­cles of na­ture, men should do their best to pro­vide houses of beauty, sanc­tu­ar­ies of ap­peal­ing sim­plic­ity and artis­tic em­bel­lish­ment, so that the high­est of hu­man emo­tions may be aroused in as­so­ci­a­tion with the in­tel­lec­tual ap­proach to spir­i­tual com­mu­nion with God. Truth, beauty, and ho­li­ness are pow­er­ful and ef­fec­tive aids to true wor­ship. But spirit com­mu­nion is not pro­moted by mere mas­sive or­nate­ness and over­much em­bel­lish­ment with man’s elab­o­rate and os­ten­ta­tious art. Beauty is most re­li­gious when it is most sim­ple and na­ture­like. How un­for­tu­nate that lit­tle chil­dren should have their first in­tro­duc­tion to con­cepts of pub­lic wor­ship in cold and bar­ren rooms so de­void of the beauty ap­peal and so empty of all sug­ges­tion of good cheer and in­spir­ing ho­li­ness! The child should be in­tro­duced to wor­ship in na­ture’s out­doors and later ac­com­pany his par­ents to pub­lic houses of re­li­gious as­sem­bly which are at least as ma­te­ri­ally at­trac­tive and ar­tis­ti­cally beau­ti­ful as the home in which he is daily domi­ciled.

177:2.1In the course of this day’s vis­it­ing with John Mark, Je­sus spent con­sid­er­able time com­par­ing their early child­hood and later boy­hood ex­pe­ri­ences. Al­though John’s par­ents pos­sessed more of this world’s goods than had Je­sus’ par­ents, there was much ex­pe­ri­ence in their boy­hood which was very sim­i­lar. Je­sus said many things which helped John bet­ter to un­der­stand his par­ents and other mem­bers of his fam­ily. When the lad asked the Mas­ter how he could know that he would turn out to be a “mighty mes­sen­ger of the king­dom,” Je­sus said:

• children › religion depends on whether fear or love dominates parent-child relationship
• love in home essential
• warnings › overindulgence adds to delinquency and demoralization; encompasses moral undoing
• warnings › overprotection harmful; allow child to have original experience

177:2.2“I know you will prove loyal to the gospel of the king­dom be­cause I can de­pend upon your pres­ent faith and love when these qual­i­ties are grounded upon such an early train­ing as has been your por­tion at home. You are the prod­uct of a home where the par­ents bear each other a sin­cere af­fec­tion, and there­fore you have not been overloved so as in­ju­ri­ously to ex­alt your con­cept of self-im­por­tance. Nei­ther has your per­son­al­ity suf­fered dis­tor­tion in con­se­quence of your par­ents’ love­less ma­neu­ver­ing for your con­fi­dence and loy­alty, the one against the other. You have en­joyed that pa­ren­tal love which in­sures laud­able self-con­fi­dence and which fos­ters nor­mal feel­ings of se­cu­rity. But you have also been for­tu­nate in that your par­ents pos­sessed wis­dom as well as love; and it was wis­dom which led them to with­hold most forms of in­dul­gence and many lux­u­ries which wealth can buy while they sent you to the syn­a­gogue school along with your neigh­bor­hood playfel­lows, and they also en­cour­aged you to learn how to live in this world by per­mit­ting you to have orig­i­nal ex­pe­ri­ence. You came over to the Jor­dan, where we preached and John’s dis­ci­ples bap­tized, with your young friend Amos. Both of you de­sired to go with us. When you re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem, your par­ents con­sented; Amos’s par­ents re­fused; they loved their son so much that they de­nied him the blessed ex­pe­ri­ence which you have had, even such as you this day en­joy. By run­ning away from home, Amos could have joined us, but in so do­ing he would have wounded love and sac­ri­ficed loy­alty. Even if such a course had been wise, it would have been a ter­ri­ble price to pay for ex­pe­ri­ence, in­de­pen­dence, and lib­erty. Wise par­ents, such as yours, see to it that their chil­dren do not have to wound love or sti­fle loy­alty in or­der to de­velop in­de­pen­dence and en­joy in­vig­o­rat­ing lib­erty when they have grown up to your age.

177:2.3“Love, John, is the su­preme re­al­ity of the uni­verse when be­stowed by all-wise be­ings, but it is a dan­ger­ous and of­ten­times semi­selfish trait as it is man­i­fested in the ex­pe­ri­ence of mor­tal par­ents. When you get mar­ried and have chil­dren of your own to rear, make sure that your love is ad­mon­ished by wis­dom and guided by in­tel­li­gence.

177:2.4“Your young friend Amos be­lieves this gospel of the king­dom just as much as you, but I can­not fully de­pend upon him; I am not cer­tain about what he will do in the years to come. His early home life was not such as would pro­duce a wholly de­pend­able per­son. Amos is too much like one of the apos­tles who failed to en­joy a nor­mal, lov­ing, and wise home train­ing. Your whole af­ter­life will be more happy and de­pend­able be­cause you spent your first eight years in a nor­mal and well-reg­u­lated home. You pos­sess a strong and well-knit char­ac­ter be­cause you grew up in a home where love pre­vailed and wis­dom reigned. Such a child­hood train­ing pro­duces a type of loy­alty which as­sures me that you will go through with the course you have be­gun.”

177:2.5For more than an hour Je­sus and John con­tin­ued this dis­cus­sion of home life. The Mas­ter went on to ex­plain to John how a child is wholly de­pen­dent on his par­ents and the as­so­ci­ated home life for all his early con­cepts of ev­ery­thing in­tel­lec­tual, so­cial, moral, and even spir­i­tual since the fam­ily rep­re­sents to the young child all that he can first know of ei­ther hu­man or di­vine re­la­tion­ships. The child must de­rive his first im­pres­sions of the uni­verse from the mother’s care; he is wholly de­pen­dent on the earthly fa­ther for his first ideas of the heav­enly Fa­ther. The child’s sub­se­quent life is made happy or un­happy, easy or dif­fi­cult, in ac­cor­dance with his early men­tal and emo­tional life, con­di­tioned by these so­cial and spir­i­tual re­la­tion­ships of the home. A hu­man be­ing’s en­tire af­ter­life is enor­mously in­flu­enced by what hap­pens dur­ing the first few years of ex­is­tence.

177:2.6It is our sin­cere be­lief that the gospel of Je­sus’ teach­ing, founded as it is on the fa­ther-child re­la­tion­ship, can hardly en­joy a world-wide ac­cep­tance un­til such a time as the home life of the mod­ern civ­i­lized peo­ples em­braces more of love and more of wis­dom. Not­with­stand­ing that par­ents of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury pos­sess great knowl­edge and in­creased truth for im­prov­ing the home and en­nobling the home life, it re­mains a fact that very few mod­ern homes are such good places in which to nur­ture boys and girls as Je­sus’ home in Gal­i­lee and John Mark’s home in Judea, al­beit the ac­cep­tance of Je­sus’ gospel will re­sult in the im­me­di­ate im­prove­ment of home life. The love life of a wise home and the loyal de­vo­tion of true re­li­gion ex­ert a pro­found re­cip­ro­cal in­flu­ence upon each other. Such a home life en­hances re­li­gion, and gen­uine re­li­gion al­ways glo­ri­fies the home.

• children › discipline favorable; love restrains unwise acts

177:2.7It is true that many of the ob­jec­tion­able stunt­ing in­flu­ences and other cramp­ing fea­tures of these olden Jew­ish homes have been vir­tu­ally elim­i­nated from many of the bet­ter-reg­u­lated mod­ern homes. There is, in­deed, more spon­ta­neous free­dom and far more per­sonal lib­erty, but this lib­erty is not re­strained by love, mo­ti­vated by loy­alty, nor di­rected by the in­tel­li­gent dis­ci­pline of wis­dom. As long as we teach the child to pray, “Our Fa­ther who is in heaven,” a tremen­dous re­spon­si­bil­ity rests upon all earthly fa­thers so to live and or­der their homes that the word fa­ther be­comes worthily en­shrined in the minds and hearts of all grow­ing chil­dren.

• children › discipline favorable; love restrains unwise acts

188:4.10Nei­ther do gen­uine be­liev­ers trou­ble them­selves so much about the fu­ture pun­ish­ment of sin. The real be­liever is only con­cerned about pres­ent sep­a­ra­tion from God. True, wise fa­thers may chas­ten their sons, but they do all this in love and for cor­rec­tive pur­poses. They do not pun­ish in anger, nei­ther do they chas­tise in ret­ri­bu­tion.

• warnings › Judas was pampered, petted, spoiled

193:4.62. As a child, life had been made too easy for him. He bit­terly re­sented thwart­ing. He al­ways ex­pected to win; he was a very poor loser.