family

• nature of family › members reap benefits, suffer consequences of others’ actions

12:7.11Broth­er­hood con­sti­tutes a fact of re­la­tion­ship be­tween ev­ery per­son­al­ity in uni­ver­sal ex­is­tence. No per­son can es­cape the ben­e­fits or the penal­ties that may come as a re­sult of re­la­tion­ship to other per­sons. The part prof­its or suf­fers in mea­sure with the whole. The good ef­fort of each man ben­e­fits all men; the er­ror or evil of each man aug­ments the tribu­la­tion of all men. As moves the part, so moves the whole. As the prog­ress of the whole, so the prog­ress of the part. The rel­a­tive ve­loc­i­ties of part and whole de­ter­mine whether the part is re­tarded by the in­er­tia of the whole or is car­ried for­ward by the mo­men­tum of the cos­mic broth­er­hood.

• incompatible with hunter’s unsettled life

52:2.8Dur­ing this age agri­cul­ture makes its ap­pear­ance. The growth of the fam­ily idea is in­com­pat­i­ble with the rov­ing and un­set­tled life of the hunter. Grad­u­ally the prac­tices of set­tled habi­ta­tions and the cul­ti­va­tion of the soil be­come es­tab­lished. The do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals and the de­vel­op­ment of home arts pro­ceed apace. Upon reach­ing the apex of bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion, a high level of civ­i­liza­tion has been at­tained, but there is lit­tle de­vel­op­ment of a me­chan­i­cal or­der; in­ven­tion is the char­ac­ter­is­tic of the suc­ceed­ing age.

• nature of family › members reap benefits, suffer consequences of others’ actions

54:5.54. While wrong­do­ing is al­ways dele­te­ri­ous to a fam­ily, wis­dom and love ad­mon­ish the up­right chil­dren to bear with an erring brother dur­ing the time granted by the af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther in which the sin­ner may see the er­ror of his way and em­brace sal­va­tion.

• nature of family › members reap benefits, suffer consequences of others’ actions

54:6.3If an af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther of a large fam­ily chooses to show mercy to one of his chil­dren guilty of griev­ous wrong­do­ing, it may well be that the ex­ten­sion of mercy to this mis­be­hav­ing child will work a tem­po­rary hard­ship upon all the other and well-be­haved chil­dren. Such even­tu­al­i­ties are in­ev­i­ta­ble; such a risk is in­sep­a­ra­ble from the re­al­ity sit­u­a­tion of hav­ing a lov­ing par­ent and of be­ing a mem­ber of a fam­ily group. Each mem­ber of a fam­ily prof­its by the righ­teous con­duct of ev­ery other mem­ber; like­wise must each mem­ber suf­fer the im­me­di­ate time-con­se­quences of the mis­con­duct of ev­ery other mem­ber. Fam­i­lies, groups, na­tions, races, worlds, sys­tems, con­stel­la­tions, and uni­verses are re­la­tion­ships of as­so­ci­a­tion which pos­sess in­di­vid­u­al­ity; and there­fore does ev­ery mem­ber of any such group, large or small, reap the ben­e­fits and suf­fer the con­se­quences of the right­do­ing and the wrong­do­ing of all other mem­bers of the group con­cerned.

54:6.4But one thing should be made clear: If you are made to suf­fer the evil con­se­quences of the sin of some mem­ber of your fam­ily, some fel­low cit­i­zen or fel­low mor­tal, even re­bel­lion in the sys­tem or else­where—no mat­ter what you may have to en­dure be­cause of the wrong­do­ing of your as­so­ciates, fel­lows, or su­pe­ri­ors—you may rest se­cure in the eter­nal as­sur­ance that such tribu­la­tions are tran­sient af­flic­tions. None of these fra­ter­nal con­se­quences of mis­be­hav­ior in the group can ever jeop­ar­dize your eter­nal prospects or in the least de­gree de­prive you of your di­vine right of Par­a­dise as­cen­sion and God at­tain­ment.

67:7.1The per­sonal (cen­tripetal) con­se­quences of the crea­ture’s will­ful and per­sis­tent re­jec­tion of light are both in­ev­i­ta­ble and in­di­vid­ual and are of con­cern only to De­ity and to that per­sonal crea­ture. Such a soul-de­stroy­ing har­vest of in­iq­uity is the in­ner reap­ing of the in­iq­ui­tous will crea­ture.

67:7.2But not so with the ex­ter­nal reper­cus­sions of sin: The im­per­sonal (cen­trifu­gal) con­se­quences of em­braced sin are both in­ev­i­ta­ble and col­lec­tive, be­ing of con­cern to ev­ery crea­ture func­tion­ing within the af­fect-range of such events.

67:7.3By fifty thou­sand years af­ter the col­lapse of the plan­e­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion, earthly af­fairs were so dis­or­ga­nized and re­tarded that the hu­man race had gained very lit­tle over the gen­eral evo­lu­tion­ary sta­tus ex­ist­ing at the time of Cali­gas­tia’s ar­rival three hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years pre­vi­ously. In cer­tain re­spects prog­ress had been made; in other di­rec­tions much ground had been lost.

67:7.4Sin is never purely lo­cal in its ef­fects. The ad­min­is­tra­tive sec­tors of the uni­verses are or­gan­is­mal; the plight of one per­son­al­ity must to a cer­tain ex­tent be shared by all. Sin, be­ing an at­ti­tude of the per­son to­ward re­al­ity, is des­tined to ex­hibit its in­her­ent neg­a­tivis­tic har­vest upon any and all re­lated lev­els of uni­verse val­ues. But the full con­se­quences of er­ro­neous think­ing, evil-do­ing, or sin­ful plan­ning are ex­pe­ri­enced only on the level of ac­tual per­for­mance. The trans­gres­sion of uni­verse law may be fa­tal in the phys­i­cal realm with­out se­ri­ously in­volv­ing the mind or im­pair­ing the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Sin is fraught with fa­tal con­se­quences to per­son­al­ity sur­vival only when it is the at­ti­tude of the whole be­ing, when it stands for the choos­ing of the mind and the will­ing of the soul.

67:7.5Evil and sin visit their con­se­quences in ma­te­rial and so­cial realms and may some­times even re­tard spir­i­tual prog­ress on cer­tain lev­els of uni­verse re­al­ity, but never does the sin of any be­ing rob an­other of the re­al­iza­tion of the di­vine right of per­son­al­ity sur­vival. Eter­nal sur­vival can be jeop­ar­dized only by the de­ci­sions of the mind and the choice of the soul of the in­di­vid­ual him­self.

67:7.6Sin on Uran­tia did very lit­tle to de­lay bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion, but it did op­er­ate to de­prive the mor­tal races of the full ben­e­fit of the Adamic in­her­i­tance. Sin enor­mously re­tards in­tel­lec­tual de­vel­op­ment, moral growth, so­cial prog­ress, and mass spir­i­tual at­tain­ment. But it does not pre­vent the high­est spir­i­tual achieve­ment by any in­di­vid­ual who chooses to know God and sin­cerely do his di­vine will.

67:7.7Cali­gas­tia re­belled, Adam and Eve did de­fault, but no mor­tal sub­se­quently born on Uran­tia has suf­fered in his per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence be­cause of these blun­ders. Ev­ery mor­tal born on Uran­tia since Cali­gas­tia’s re­bel­lion has been in some man­ner time-pe­nal­ized, but the fu­ture wel­fare of such souls has never been in the least eter­nity-jeop­ar­dized. No per­son is ever made to suf­fer vi­tal spir­i­tual de­pri­va­tion be­cause of the sin of an­other. Sin is wholly per­sonal as to moral guilt or spir­i­tual con­se­quences, not­with­stand­ing its far-flung reper­cus­sions in ad­min­is­tra­tive, in­tel­lec­tual, and so­cial do­mains.

67:7.8While we can­not fathom the wis­dom that per­mits such catas­tro­phes, we can al­ways dis­cern the ben­e­fi­cial out­work­ing of these lo­cal dis­tur­bances as they are re­flected out upon the uni­verse at large.

• nature of family › man and woman adjusting their antagonisms
• value of families › almost everything of lasting value has roots in

68:2.8Al­most ev­ery­thing of last­ing value in civ­i­liza­tion has its roots in the fam­ily. The fam­ily was the first suc­cess­ful peace group, the man and woman learn­ing how to ad­just their an­tag­o­nisms while at the same time teach­ing the pur­suits of peace to their chil­dren.

• reasons ancients desired large families

68:6.6The size of the fam­ily has al­ways been in­flu­enced by the stan­dards of liv­ing. The higher the stan­dard the smaller the fam­ily, up to the point of es­tab­lished sta­tus or grad­ual ex­tinc­tion.

• obligation to transmit legitimate wealth to succeeding generations

69:9.31. The fam­ily. Man not only craves to ac­cu­mu­late prop­erty; he de­sires to be­queath his cap­i­tal goods to his progeny. But in early com­mu­nal so­ci­ety a man’s cap­i­tal was ei­ther im­me­di­ately con­sumed or dis­tributed among the group at his death. There was no in­her­i­tance of prop­erty—the in­her­i­tance tax was one hun­dred per cent. The later cap­i­tal-ac­cu­mu­la­tion and prop­erty-in­her­i­tance mores were a dis­tinct so­cial ad­vance. And this is true not­with­stand­ing the sub­se­quent gross abuses at­ten­dant upon the mis­use of cap­i­tal.

• matriarchal families › natural and biologic

69:9.7In ear­li­est times women were the prop­erty of the com­mu­nity, and the mother dom­i­nated the fam­ily. The early chiefs owned all the land and were pro­pri­etors of all the women; mar­riage re­quired the con­sent of the tribal ruler. With the pass­ing of com­mu­nism, women were held in­di­vid­u­ally, and the fa­ther grad­u­ally as­sumed do­mes­tic con­trol. Thus the home had its be­gin­ning, and the pre­vail­ing polyg­a­mous cus­toms were grad­u­ally dis­placed by mo­nog­amy. (Polygamy is the sur­vival of the fe­male-slav­ery el­e­ment in mar­riage. Mo­nog­amy is the slave-free ideal of the match­less as­so­ci­a­tion of one man and one woman in the ex­qui­site en­ter­prise of home build­ing, off­spring rear­ing, mu­tual cul­ture, and self-im­prove­ment.)

• nature of family › sex hunger and mother love establish

70:3.2Sex hunger and mother love es­tab­lish the fam­ily. But real gov­ern­ment does not ap­pear un­til super­fam­ily groups have be­gun to form. In the pre­fam­ily days of the horde, lead­er­ship was pro­vided by in­for­mally cho­sen in­di­vid­u­als. The African Bush­men have never pro­gressed be­yond this prim­i­tive stage; they do not have chiefs in the horde.

• matriarchal families › clan peace chiefs ruled through mother line
• patriarchal families › clan war chiefs established father line

70:4.10The clan peace chiefs usu­ally ruled through the mother line; the tribal war chiefs es­tab­lished the fa­ther line. The courts of the tribal chiefs and early kings con­sisted of the head­men of the clans, whom it was cus­tom­ary to in­vite into the king’s pres­ence sev­eral times a year. This en­abled him to watch them and the bet­ter se­cure their co-op­er­a­tion. The clans served a valu­able pur­pose in lo­cal self-gov­ern­ment, but they greatly de­layed the growth of large and strong na­tions.

• patriarchal families › council of elders gradually grew into

70:5.2With the grad­ual emer­gence of the fam­ily units the foun­da­tions of gov­ern­ment were es­tab­lished in the clan or­ga­ni­za­tion, the group­ing of con­san­guineous fam­i­lies. The first real gov­ern­men­tal body was the coun­cil of the el­ders. This reg­u­la­tive group was com­posed of old men who had dis­tin­guished them­selves in some ef­fi­cient man­ner. Wis­dom and ex­pe­ri­ence were early ap­pre­ci­ated even by bar­baric man, and there en­sued a long age of the dom­i­na­tion of the el­ders. This reign of the oli­garchy of age grad­u­ally grew into the pa­tri­ar­chal idea.

• matriarchal families › red men clung to mother-family

71:1.74. Prac­ti­cal fam­ily or­ga­ni­za­tion. These red men clung to the mother-fam­ily and nephew in­her­i­tance.

• ancestor worship created strong families
• position accorded f. in China creates stability
• value of families › almost everything of lasting value has roots in

79:8.9The great strength in a ven­er­a­tion of an­ces­try is the value that such an at­ti­tude places upon the fam­ily. The amaz­ing sta­bil­ity and per­sis­tence of Chi­nese cul­ture is a con­se­quence of the paramount po­si­tion ac­corded the fam­ily, for civ­i­liza­tion is di­rectly de­pen­dent on the ef­fec­tive func­tion­ing of the fam­ily; and in China the fam­ily at­tained a so­cial im­por­tance, even a re­li­gious sig­nif­i­cance, ap­proached by few other peo­ples.

79:8.10The fil­ial de­vo­tion and fam­ily loy­alty ex­acted by the grow­ing cult of an­ces­tor wor­ship in­sured the build­ing up of su­pe­rior fam­ily re­la­tion­ships and of en­dur­ing fam­ily groups, all of which fa­cil­i­tated the fol­low­ing fac­tors in the preser­va­tion of civ­i­liza­tion:

• matriarchal families › transition to patriarchal f. in China

79:8.15The for­ma­tive pe­riod of Chi­nese civ­i­liza­tion, open­ing with the com­ing of the And­ites, con­tin­ues on down to the great eth­i­cal, moral, and semire­li­gious awak­en­ing of the sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ. And Chi­nese tra­di­tion pre­serves the hazy rec­ord of the evo­lu­tion­ary past; the tran­si­tion from mother- to fa­ther-fam­ily, the es­tab­lish­ment of agri­cul­ture, the de­vel­op­ment of ar­chi­tec­ture, the ini­ti­a­tion of in­dus­try—all these are suc­ces­sively nar­rated. And this story pre­sents, with greater ac­cu­racy than any other sim­i­lar ac­count, the pic­ture of the mag­nif­i­cent as­cent of a su­pe­rior peo­ple from the lev­els of bar­barism. Dur­ing this time they passed from a prim­i­tive ag­ri­cul­tural so­ci­ety to a higher so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion em­brac­ing cities, man­u­fac­ture, met­al­work­ing, com­mer­cial ex­change, gov­ern­ment, writ­ing, math­e­mat­ics, art, sci­ence, and print­ing.

• value of families › most effective social group; master civilizer

82:0.2While re­li­gious, so­cial, and ed­u­ca­tional in­sti­tu­tions are all es­sen­tial to the sur­vival of cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion, the fam­ily is the mas­ter civ­i­lizer. A child learns most of the es­sen­tials of life from his fam­ily and the neigh­bors.

• value of families › must be maintained as an educational institution

82:0.3The hu­mans of olden times did not pos­sess a very rich so­cial civ­i­liza­tion, but such as they had they faith­fully and ef­fec­tively passed on to the next gen­er­a­tion. And you should rec­og­nize that most of these civ­i­liza­tions of the past con­tin­ued to evolve with a bare min­i­mum of other in­sti­tu­tional in­flu­ences be­cause the home was ef­fec­tively func­tion­ing. To­day the hu­man races pos­sess a rich so­cial and cul­tural her­itage, and it should be wisely and ef­fec­tively passed on to suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions. The fam­ily as an ed­u­ca­tional in­sti­tu­tion must be main­tained.

84:2.1The woman’s pe­ri­odic hem­or­rhage and her fur­ther loss of blood at child­birth early sug­gested blood as the cre­ator of the child (even as the seat of the soul) and gave ori­gin to the blood-bond con­cept of hu­man re­la­tion­ships. In early times all de­scent was reck­oned in the fe­male line, that be­ing the only part of in­her­i­tance which was at all cer­tain.

• matriarchal families › natural and biologic

84:2.2The prim­i­tive fam­ily, grow­ing out of the in­stinc­tive bi­o­logic blood bond of mother and child, was in­evitably a mother-fam­ily; and many tribes long held to this ar­range­ment. The mother-fam­ily was the only pos­si­ble tran­si­tion from the stage of group mar­riage in the horde to the later and im­proved home life of the polyg­a­mous and monog­a­mous fa­ther-fam­i­lies. The mother-fam­ily was nat­u­ral and bi­o­logic; the fa­ther-fam­ily is so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal. The per­sis­tence of the mother-fam­ily among the North Amer­i­can red men is one of the chief rea­sons why the oth­er­wise pro­gres­sive Iro­quois never be­came a real state.

• matriarchal families › wife’s mother was supreme authority in

84:2.3Un­der the mother-fam­ily mores the wife’s mother en­joyed vir­tu­ally su­preme au­thor­ity in the home; even the wife’s broth­ers and their sons were more ac­tive in fam­ily super­vi­sion than was the hus­band. Fa­thers were of­ten re­named af­ter their own chil­dren.

• patriarchal families › f. under father dominance

84:2.4The ear­li­est races gave lit­tle credit to the fa­ther, look­ing upon the child as com­ing al­to­gether from the mother. They be­lieved that chil­dren re­sem­bled the fa­ther as a re­sult of as­so­ci­a­tion, or that they were “marked” in this man­ner be­cause the mother de­sired them to look like the fa­ther. Later on, when the switch came from the mother-fam­ily to the fa­ther-fam­ily, the fa­ther took all credit for the child, and many of the taboos on a preg­nant woman were sub­se­quently ex­tended to in­clude her hus­band. The prospec­tive fa­ther ceased work as the time of de­liv­ery ap­proached, and at child­birth he went to bed, along with the wife, re­main­ing at rest from three to eight days. The wife might arise the next day and en­gage in hard la­bor, but the hus­band re­mained in bed to re­ceive con­grat­u­la­tions; this was all a part of the early mores de­signed to es­tab­lish the fa­ther’s right to the child.

84:2.5At first, it was the cus­tom for the man to go to his wife’s peo­ple, but in later times, af­ter a man had paid or worked out the bride price, he could take his wife and chil­dren back to his own peo­ple. The tran­si­tion from the mother-fam­ily to the fa­ther-fam­ily ex­plains the oth­er­wise mean­ing­less pro­hi­bi­tions of some types of cousin mar­riages while oth­ers of equal kin­ship are ap­proved.

• matriarchal families › came to speedy end with passing of hunter mores
• matriarchal families › wife stealing and purchase hastened passing of

84:2.6With the pass­ing of the hunter mores, when herd­ing gave man con­trol of the chief food sup­ply, the mother-fam­ily came to a speedy end. It failed sim­ply be­cause it could not suc­cess­fully com­pete with the newer fa­ther-fam­ily. Power lodged with the male rel­a­tives of the mother could not com­pete with power con­cen­trated in the hus­band-fa­ther. Woman was not equal to the com­bined tasks of child­bear­ing and of ex­er­cis­ing con­tin­u­ous au­thor­ity and in­creas­ing do­mes­tic power. The on­com­ing of wife steal­ing and later wife pur­chase has­tened the pass­ing of the mother-fam­ily.

84:2.7The stu­pen­dous change from the mother-fam­ily to the fa­ther-fam­ily is one of the most rad­i­cal and com­plete right-about-face ad­just­ments ever ex­e­cuted by the hu­man race. This change led at once to greater so­cial ex­pres­sion and in­creased fam­ily ad­ven­ture.

• patriarchal families › pastoral living created

84:3.1It may be that the in­stinct of moth­er­hood led woman into mar­riage, but it was man’s su­pe­rior strength, to­gether with the in­flu­ence of the mores, that vir­tu­ally com­pelled her to re­main in wed­lock. Pas­toral liv­ing tended to cre­ate a new sys­tem of mores, the pa­tri­ar­chal type of fam­ily life; and the ba­sis of fam­ily unity un­der the herder and early ag­ri­cul­tural mores was the un­ques­tioned and ar­bi­trary au­thor­ity of the fa­ther. All so­ci­ety, whether na­tional or fa­mil­ial, passed through the stage of the au­to­cratic au­thor­ity of a pa­tri­ar­chal or­der.

84:3.2The scant cour­tesy paid wom­ankind dur­ing the Old Tes­ta­ment era is a true re­flec­tion of the mores of the herds­men. The He­brew pa­tri­archs were all herds­men, as is wit­nessed by the say­ing, “The Lord is my Shep­herd.”

84:3.3But man was no more to blame for his low opin­ion of woman dur­ing past ages than was woman her­self. She failed to get so­cial rec­og­ni­tion dur­ing prim­i­tive times be­cause she did not func­tion in an emer­gency; she was not a spec­tac­u­lar or cri­sis hero. Ma­ter­nity was a dis­tinct dis­abil­ity in the ex­is­tence strug­gle; mother love hand­i­capped women in the tribal de­fense.

84:3.4Prim­i­tive women also un­in­ten­tion­ally cre­ated their de­pen­dence on the male by their ad­mi­ra­tion and ap­plause for his pug­nac­ity and viril­ity. This ex­al­ta­tion of the war­rior el­e­vated the male ego while it equally de­pressed that of the fe­male and made her more de­pen­dent; a mil­i­tary uni­form still might­ily stirs the fem­i­nine emo­tions.

84:3.5Among the more ad­vanced races, women are not so large or so strong as men. Woman, be­ing the weaker, there­fore be­came the more tact­ful; she early learned to trade upon her sex charms. She be­came more alert and con­ser­va­tive than man, though slightly less pro­found. Man was woman’s su­pe­rior on the bat­tle­field and in the hunt; but at home woman has usu­ally out­gen­eraled even the most prim­i­tive of men.

84:3.6The herds­man looked to his flocks for sus­te­nance, but through­out these pas­toral ages woman must still pro­vide the veg­etable food. Prim­i­tive man shunned the soil; it was al­to­gether too peace­ful, too un­ad­ven­ture­some. There was also an old su­per­sti­tion that women could raise bet­ter plants; they were moth­ers. In many back­ward tribes to­day, the men cook the meat, the women the veg­eta­bles, and when the prim­i­tive tribes of Aus­tralia are on the march, the women never at­tack game, while a man would not stoop to dig a root.

84:3.7Woman has al­ways had to work; at least right up to mod­ern times the fe­male has been a real pro­ducer. Man has usu­ally cho­sen the eas­ier path, and this in­equal­ity has ex­isted through­out the en­tire his­tory of the hu­man race. Woman has al­ways been the bur­den bearer, car­ry­ing the fam­ily prop­erty and tend­ing the chil­dren, thus leav­ing the man’s hands free for fight­ing or hunt­ing.

84:3.8Woman’s first lib­er­a­tion came when man con­sented to till the soil, con­sented to do what had thereto­fore been re­garded as woman’s work. It was a great step for­ward when male cap­tives were no longer killed but were en­slaved as agri­cul­tur­ists. This brought about the lib­er­a­tion of woman so that she could de­vote more time to home­mak­ing and child cul­ture.

84:3.9The pro­vi­sion of milk for the young led to ear­lier wean­ing of ba­bies, hence to the bear­ing of more chil­dren by the moth­ers thus re­lieved of their some­times tem­po­rary bar­ren­ness, while the use of cow’s milk and goat’s milk greatly re­duced in­fant mor­tal­ity. Be­fore the herd­ing stage of so­ci­ety, moth­ers used to nurse their ba­bies un­til they were four and five years old.

84:3.10De­creas­ing prim­i­tive war­fare greatly less­ened the dis­par­ity be­tween the di­vi­sion of la­bor based on sex. But women still had to do the real work while men did picket duty. No camp or vil­lage could be left un­guarded day or night, but even this task was al­le­vi­ated by the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of the dog. In gen­eral, the com­ing of agri­cul­ture has en­hanced woman’s pres­tige and so­cial stand­ing; at least this was true up to the time man him­self turned agri­cul­tur­ist. And as soon as man ad­dressed him­self to the till­ing of the soil, there im­me­di­ately en­sued great im­prove­ment in meth­ods of agri­cul­ture, ex­tend­ing on down through suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions. In hunt­ing and war man had learned the value of or­ga­ni­za­tion, and he in­tro­duced these tech­niques into in­dus­try and later, when tak­ing over much of woman’s work, greatly im­proved on her loose meth­ods of la­bor.

84:7.1Sex mat­ing is in­stinc­tive, chil­dren are the nat­u­ral re­sult, and the fam­ily thus au­to­mat­i­cally comes into ex­is­tence. As are the fam­i­lies of the race or na­tion, so is its so­ci­ety. If the fam­i­lies are good, the so­ci­ety is like­wise good. The great cul­tural sta­bil­ity of the Jew­ish and of the Chi­nese peo­ples lies in the strength of their fam­ily groups.

84:7.2Woman’s in­stinct to love and care for chil­dren con­spired to make her the in­ter­ested party in pro­mot­ing mar­riage and prim­i­tive fam­ily life. Man was only forced into home build­ing by the pres­sure of the later mores and so­cial con­ven­tions; he was slow to take an in­ter­est in the es­tab­lish­ment of mar­riage and home be­cause the sex act im­poses no bi­o­logic con­se­quences upon him.

84:7.3Sex as­so­ci­a­tion is nat­u­ral, but mar­riage is so­cial and has al­ways been reg­u­lated by the mores. The mores (re­li­gious, moral, and eth­i­cal), to­gether with prop­erty, pride, and chivalry, sta­bi­lize the in­sti­tu­tions of mar­riage and fam­ily. When­ever the mores fluc­tu­ate, there is fluc­tu­a­tion in the sta­bil­ity of the home-mar­riage in­sti­tu­tion. Mar­riage is now pass­ing out of the prop­erty stage into the per­sonal era. For­merly man pro­tected woman be­cause she was his chat­tel, and she obeyed for the same rea­son. Re­gard­less of its mer­its this sys­tem did pro­vide sta­bil­ity. Now, woman is no longer re­garded as prop­erty, and new mores are emerg­ing de­signed to sta­bi­lize the mar­riage-home in­sti­tu­tion:

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.

84:7.52. The new role of sci­ence—pro­cre­ation is be­com­ing more and more vol­un­tary, sub­ject to man’s con­trol. In an­cient times lack of un­der­stand­ing in­sured the ap­pear­ance of chil­dren in the ab­sence of all de­sire there­for.

84:7.63. The new func­tion of plea­sure lures—this in­tro­duces a new fac­tor into racial sur­vival; an­cient man ex­posed un­de­sired chil­dren to die; mod­erns refuse to bear them.

84:7.74. The en­hance­ment of pa­ren­tal in­stinct—each gen­er­a­tion now tends to elim­i­nate from the re­pro­duc­tive stream of the race those in­di­vid­u­als in whom pa­ren­tal in­stinct is in­suf­fi­ciently strong to in­sure the pro­cre­ation of chil­dren, the prospec­tive par­ents of the next gen­er­a­tion.

84:7.8But the home as an in­sti­tu­tion, a part­ner­ship be­tween one man and one woman, dates more specif­i­cally from the days of Dala­ma­tia, about one-half mil­lion years ago, the monog­a­mous prac­tices of An­don and his im­me­di­ate de­scen­dants hav­ing been aban­doned long be­fore. Fam­ily life, how­ever, was not much to boast of be­fore the days of the Nod­ites and the later Adamites. Adam and Eve ex­erted a last­ing in­flu­ence on all man­kind; for the first time in the his­tory of the world men and women were ob­served work­ing side by side in the Gar­den. The Edenic ideal, the whole fam­ily as gar­den­ers, was a new idea on Uran­tia.

• early f. embraced related working group, slaves

84:7.9The early fam­ily em­braced a re­lated work­ing group, in­clud­ing the slaves, all liv­ing in one dwell­ing. Mar­riage and fam­ily life have not al­ways been iden­ti­cal but have of ne­ces­sity been closely as­so­ci­ated. Woman al­ways wanted the in­di­vid­ual fam­ily, and even­tu­ally she had her way.

84:7.10Love of off­spring is al­most uni­ver­sal and is of dis­tinct sur­vival value. The an­cients al­ways sac­ri­ficed the mother’s in­ter­ests for the wel­fare of the child; an Es­kimo mother even yet licks her baby in lieu of wash­ing. But prim­i­tive moth­ers only nour­ished and cared for their chil­dren when very young; like the an­i­mals, they dis­carded them as soon as they grew up. En­dur­ing and con­tin­u­ous hu­man as­so­ci­a­tions have never been founded on bi­o­logic af­fec­tion alone. The an­i­mals love their chil­dren; man—civ­i­lized man—loves his chil­dren’s chil­dren. The higher the civ­i­liza­tion, the greater the joy of par­ents in the chil­dren’s ad­vance­ment and suc­cess; thus the new and higher re­al­iza­tion of name pride comes into ex­is­tence.

• reasons ancients desired large families

84:7.11The large fam­i­lies among an­cient peo­ples were not nec­es­sar­ily af­fec­tional. Many chil­dren were de­sired be­cause:

84:7.121. They were valu­able as la­bor­ers.

84:7.132. They were old-age in­sur­ance.

84:7.143. Daugh­ters were sal­able.

84:7.154. Fam­ily pride re­quired ex­ten­sion of name.

84:7.165. Sons af­forded pro­tec­tion and de­fense.

84:7.176. Ghost fear pro­duced a dread of be­ing alone.

84:7.187. Cer­tain re­li­gions re­quired off­spring.

84:7.19An­ces­tor wor­shipers view the fail­ure to have sons as the su­preme calamity for all time and eter­nity. They de­sire above all else to have sons to of­fi­ci­ate in the post-mortem feasts, to of­fer the re­quired sac­ri­fices for the ghost’s prog­ress through spir­it­land.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

• value of families › built on tolerance, patience, forgiveness

84:7.28Mar­riage, with chil­dren and con­se­quent fam­ily life, is stim­u­la­tive of the high­est po­ten­tials in hu­man na­ture and si­mul­ta­ne­ously pro­vides the ideal av­enue for the ex­pres­sion of these quick­ened at­tri­butes of mor­tal per­son­al­ity. The fam­ily pro­vides for the bi­o­logic per­pet­u­a­tion of the hu­man species. The home is the nat­u­ral so­cial arena wherein the ethics of blood broth­er­hood may be grasped by the grow­ing chil­dren. The fam­ily is the fun­da­men­tal unit of fra­ter­nity in which par­ents and chil­dren learn those lessons of pa­tience, al­tru­ism, tol­er­ance, and for­bear­ance which are so es­sen­tial to the re­al­iza­tion of broth­er­hood among all men.

• Andite family council practices improve society

84:7.29Hu­man so­ci­ety would be greatly im­proved if the civ­i­lized races would more gen­er­ally re­turn to the fam­ily-coun­cil prac­tices of the And­ites. They did not main­tain the pa­tri­ar­chal or au­to­cratic form of fam­ily gov­ern­ment. They were very broth­erly and as­so­cia­tive, freely and frankly dis­cussing ev­ery pro­posal and reg­u­la­tion of a fam­ily na­ture. They were ide­ally fra­ter­nal in all their fam­ily gov­ern­ment. In an ideal fam­ily fil­ial and pa­ren­tal af­fec­tion are both aug­mented by fra­ter­nal de­vo­tion.

• nature of family › man and woman adjusting their antagonisms
• value of families › reveals to parents Creator’s attitude to his children

84:7.30Fam­ily life is the pro­gen­i­tor of true moral­ity, the an­ces­tor of the con­scious­ness of loy­alty to duty. The en­forced as­so­ci­a­tions of fam­ily life sta­bi­lize per­son­al­ity and stim­u­late its growth through the com­pul­sion of ne­ces­si­tous ad­just­ment to other and di­verse per­son­al­i­ties. But even more, a true fam­ily—a good fam­ily—re­veals to the pa­ren­tal pro­cre­ators the at­ti­tude of the Cre­ator to his chil­dren, while at the same time such true par­ents por­tray to their chil­dren the first of a long se­ries of as­cend­ing dis­clo­sures of the love of the Par­a­dise par­ent of all uni­verse chil­dren.

• rising tide of self-gratification is threat to

84:8.1The great threat against fam­ily life is the men­ac­ing ris­ing tide of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion, the mod­ern plea­sure ma­nia. The prime in­cen­tive to mar­riage used to be eco­nomic; sex at­trac­tion was sec­ondary. Mar­riage, founded on self-main­te­nance, led to self-per­pet­u­a­tion and con­comi­tantly pro­vided one of the most de­sir­able forms of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. It is the only in­sti­tu­tion of hu­man so­ci­ety which em­braces all three of the great in­cen­tives for liv­ing.

• nature of family › cannot be had without children

99:4.2So­cial lead­er­ship is trans­formed by spir­i­tual in­sight; re­li­gion pre­vents all col­lec­tive move­ments from los­ing sight of their true ob­jec­tives. To­gether with chil­dren, re­li­gion is the great uni­fier of fam­ily life, pro­vided it is a liv­ing and grow­ing faith. Fam­ily life can­not be had with­out chil­dren; it can be lived with­out re­li­gion, but such a hand­i­cap enor­mously mul­ti­plies the dif­fi­cul­ties of this in­ti­mate hu­man as­so­ci­a­tion. Dur­ing the early decades of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, fam­ily life, next to per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, suf­fers most from the deca­dence con­se­quent upon the tran­si­tion from old re­li­gious loy­al­ties to the emerg­ing new mean­ings and val­ues.

• Jesus › gave precedence to accepted customs

120:3.3“2. As con­cerns fam­ily re­la­tion­ships, give prece­dence to the ac­cepted cus­toms of fam­ily life as you find them es­tab­lished in the day and gen­er­a­tion of your be­stowal. Live your fam­ily and com­mu­nity life in ac­cor­dance with the prac­tices of the peo­ple among whom you have elected to ap­pear.

• loyalty to and watchcare over f. is the most sacred human trust

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.

• loyalty to and watchcare over f. is the most sacred human trust

127:2.8Some­thing had to be done. He must state his po­si­tion, and this he did bravely and diplo­mat­i­cally to the sat­is­fac­tion of many, but not all. He ad­hered to the terms of his orig­i­nal plea, main­tain­ing that his first duty was to his fam­ily, that a wid­owed mother and eight broth­ers and sis­ters needed some­thing more than mere money could buy—the phys­i­cal ne­ces­si­ties of life—that they were en­ti­tled to a fa­ther’s watch­care and guid­ance, and that he could not in clear con­science re­lease him­self from the obli­ga­tion which a cruel ac­ci­dent had thrust upon him. He paid com­pli­ment to his mother and el­dest brother for be­ing will­ing to re­lease him but re­it­er­ated that loy­alty to a dead fa­ther for­bade his leav­ing the fam­ily no mat­ter how much money was forth­com­ing for their ma­te­rial sup­port, mak­ing his never-to-be-for­got­ten state­ment that “money can­not love.” In the course of this ad­dress Je­sus made sev­eral veiled ref­er­ences to his “life mis­sion” but ex­plained that, re­gard­less of whether or not it might be in­con­sis­tent with the mil­i­tary idea, it, along with ev­ery­thing else in his life, had been given up in or­der that he might be able to dis­charge faith­fully his obli­ga­tion to his fam­ily. Ev­ery­one in Naz­a­reth well knew he was a good fa­ther to his fam­ily, and this was a mat­ter so near the heart of ev­ery no­ble Jew that Je­sus’ plea found an ap­pre­cia­tive re­sponse in the hearts of many of his hear­ers; and some of those who were not thus minded were dis­armed by a speech made by James, which, while not on the pro­gram, was de­liv­ered at this time. That very day the chazan had re­hearsed James in his speech, but that was their se­cret.

• Jesus › family council practice

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.

• loyalty to and watchcare over f. is the most sacred human trust

127:5.3Je­sus lis­tened at­ten­tively and sym­pa­thet­i­cally to the recital of these things, first by the fa­ther, then by Re­becca her­self. He made kindly re­ply to the ef­fect that no amount of money could take the place of his obli­ga­tion per­son­ally to rear his fa­ther’s fam­ily, to “ful­fill the most sa­cred of all hu­man trusts—loy­alty to one’s own flesh and blood.” Re­becca’s fa­ther was deeply touched by Je­sus’ words of fam­ily de­vo­tion and re­tired from the con­fer­ence. His only re­mark to Mary, his wife, was: “We can’t have him for a son; he is too no­ble for us.”

• Jesus › family council practice

128:2.2This year Si­mon grad­u­ated from school and be­gan work with Je­sus’ old boy­hood play­mate and ever-ready de­fender, Ja­cob the stone ma­son. As a re­sult of sev­eral fam­ily con­fer­ences it was de­cided that it was un­wise for all the boys to take up car­pen­try. It was thought that by di­ver­si­fy­ing their trades they would be pre­pared to take con­tracts for putting up en­tire build­ings. Again, they had not all kept busy since three of them had been work­ing as full-time car­pen­ters.

• Jesus › family council practice

128:2.4Be­fore tak­ing up his new em­ploy­ment at Sep­pho­ris, Je­sus held one of his pe­ri­odic fam­ily con­fer­ences and solemnly in­stalled James, then just past eigh­teen years old, as act­ing head of the fam­ily. He prom­ised his brother hearty sup­port and full co-op­er­a­tion and ex­acted for­mal promises of obe­di­ence to James from each mem­ber of the fam­ily. From this day James as­sumed full fi­nan­cial re­spon­si­bil­ity for the fam­ily, Je­sus mak­ing his weekly pay­ments to his brother. Never again did Je­sus take the reins out of James’s hands. While work­ing at Sep­pho­ris he could have walked home ev­ery night if nec­es­sary, but he pur­posely re­mained away, as­sign­ing weather and other rea­sons, but his true mo­tive was to train James and Joseph in the bear­ing of the fam­ily re­spon­si­bil­ity. He had be­gun the slow pro­cess of wean­ing his fam­ily. Each Sab­bath Je­sus re­turned to Naz­a­reth, and some­times dur­ing the week when oc­ca­sion re­quired, to ob­serve the work­ing of the new plan, to give ad­vice and of­fer help­ful sug­ges­tions.

• obligation to transmit legitimate wealth to succeeding generations

132:5.15“1. As stew­ard of in­her­ited wealth you should con­sider its sources. You are un­der moral obli­ga­tion to rep­re­sent the past gen­er­a­tion in the hon­est trans­mit­tal of le­git­i­mate wealth to suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions af­ter sub­tract­ing a fair toll for the ben­e­fit of the pres­ent gen­er­a­tion. But you are not ob­li­gated to per­pet­u­ate any dis­hon­esty or in­jus­tice in­volved in the un­fair ac­cu­mu­la­tion of wealth by your an­ces­tors. Any por­tion of your in­her­ited wealth which turns out to have been de­rived through fraud or un­fair­ness, you may dis­burse in ac­cor­dance with your con­vic­tions of jus­tice, gen­eros­ity, and resti­tu­tion. The re­main­der of your le­git­i­mate in­her­ited wealth you may use in eq­uity and trans­mit in se­cu­rity as the trus­tee of one gen­er­a­tion for an­other. Wise dis­crim­i­na­tion and sound judg­ment should dic­tate your de­ci­sions re­gard­ing the be­quest of riches to your suc­ces­sors.

• Jesus › family council practice

134:9.1It was now near the end of the sum­mer, about the time of the day of atone­ment and the feast of taber­na­cles. Je­sus had a fam­ily meet­ing in Ca­per­naum over the Sab­bath and the next day started for Je­ru­sa­lem with John the son of Zeb­e­dee, go­ing to the east of the lake and by Gerasa and on down the Jor­dan val­ley. While he vis­ited some with his com­pan­ion on the way, John noted a great change in Je­sus.

• Jesus › teachings about God based on
• loyalty to and watchcare over f. is the most sacred human trust
• must not interfere with religious obligations
• nature of family › temporal institution; does not survive death
• value of families › almost everything of lasting value has roots in

140:8.14The fam­ily oc­cu­pied the very cen­ter of Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life—here and here­after. He based his teach­ings about God on the fam­ily, while he sought to cor­rect the Jew­ish ten­dency to over­honor an­ces­tors. He ex­alted fam­ily life as the high­est hu­man duty but made it plain that fam­ily re­la­tion­ships must not in­ter­fere with re­li­gious obli­ga­tions. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that the fam­ily is a tem­po­ral in­sti­tu­tion; that it does not sur­vive death. Je­sus did not hes­i­tate to give up his fam­ily when the fam­ily ran counter to the Fa­ther’s will. He taught the new and larger broth­er­hood of man—the sons of God. In Je­sus’ time di­vorce prac­tices were lax in Pales­tine and through­out the Ro­man Em­pire. He re­peat­edly re­fused to lay down laws re­gard­ing mar­riage and di­vorce, but many of Je­sus’ early fol­low­ers had strong opin­ions on di­vorce and did not hes­i­tate to at­trib­ute them to him. All of the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ers held to these more strin­gent and ad­vanced ideas about di­vorce ex­cept John Mark.

• sorrow when some in f. accept and others reject gospel

142:2.2When Ja­cob fin­ished speak­ing, Je­sus re­plied: “Ja­cob, you have well stated the teach­ings of the olden proph­ets who taught the chil­dren of their gen­er­a­tion in ac­cor­dance with the light of their day. Our Fa­ther in Par­a­dise is change­less. But the con­cept of his na­ture has en­larged and grown from the days of Moses down through the times of Amos and even to the gen­er­a­tion of the prophet Isa­iah. And now have I come in the flesh to re­veal the Fa­ther in new glory and to show forth his love and mercy to all men on all worlds. As the gospel of this king­dom shall spread over the world with its mes­sage of good cheer and good will to all men, there will grow up im­proved and bet­ter re­la­tions among the fam­i­lies of all na­tions. As time passes, fa­thers and their chil­dren will love each other more, and thus will be brought about a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the love of the Fa­ther in heaven for his chil­dren on earth. Re­mem­ber, Ja­cob, that a good and true fa­ther not only loves his fam­ily as a whole—as a fam­ily—but he also truly loves and af­fec­tion­ately cares for each in­di­vid­ual mem­ber.”

142:7.1Af­ter the busy pe­riod of teach­ing and per­sonal work of Pass­over week in Je­ru­sa­lem, Je­sus spent the next Wednes­day at Beth­any with his apos­tles, rest­ing. That af­ter­noon, Thomas asked a ques­tion which elicited a long and in­struc­tive an­swer. Said Thomas: “Mas­ter, on the day we were set apart as am­bas­sadors of the king­dom, you told us many things, in­structed us re­gard­ing our per­sonal mode of life, but what shall we teach the mul­ti­tude? How are these peo­ple to live af­ter the king­dom more fully comes? Shall your dis­ci­ples own slaves? Shall your be­liev­ers court pov­erty and shun prop­erty? Shall mercy alone pre­vail so that we shall have no more law and jus­tice?” Je­sus and the twelve spent all af­ter­noon and all that evening, af­ter sup­per, dis­cussing Thomas’s ques­tions. For the pur­poses of this rec­ord we pre­sent the fol­low­ing sum­mary of the Mas­ter’s in­struc­tion:

142:7.2Je­sus sought first to make plain to his apos­tles that he him­self was on earth liv­ing a unique life in the flesh, and that they, the twelve, had been called to par­tic­i­pate in this be­stowal ex­pe­ri­ence of the Son of Man; and as such cowork­ers, they, too, must share in many of the spe­cial re­stric­tions and obli­ga­tions of the en­tire be­stowal ex­pe­ri­ence. There was a veiled in­ti­ma­tion that the Son of Man was the only per­son who had ever lived on earth who could si­mul­ta­ne­ously see into the very heart of God and into the very depths of man’s soul.

142:7.3Very plainly Je­sus ex­plained that the king­dom of heaven was an evo­lu­tion­ary ex­pe­ri­ence, be­gin­ning here on earth and pro­gress­ing up through suc­ces­sive life sta­tions to Par­a­dise. In the course of the evening he def­i­nitely stated that at some fu­ture stage of king­dom de­vel­op­ment he would re­visit this world in spir­i­tual power and di­vine glory.

• value of families › earthly f. illustrates the heavenly

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.

• nature of family › founded on 7 facts

142:7.5Fol­low­ing that, came the mem­o­rable dis­cus­sion of the fun­da­men­tal char­ac­ter­is­tics of fam­ily life and their ap­pli­ca­tion to the re­la­tion­ship ex­ist­ing be­tween God and man. Je­sus stated that a true fam­ily is founded on the fol­low­ing seven facts:

142:7.61. The fact of ex­is­tence. The re­la­tion­ships of na­ture and the phe­nom­ena of mor­tal like­nesses are bound up in the fam­ily: Chil­dren in­herit cer­tain pa­ren­tal traits. The chil­dren take ori­gin in the par­ents; per­son­al­ity ex­is­tence de­pends on the act of the par­ent. The re­la­tion­ship of fa­ther and child is in­her­ent in all na­ture and per­vades all liv­ing ex­is­tences.

142:7.72. Se­cu­rity and plea­sure. True fa­thers take great plea­sure in pro­vid­ing for the needs of their chil­dren. Many fa­thers are not con­tent with sup­ply­ing the mere wants of their chil­dren but en­joy mak­ing pro­vi­sion for their plea­sures also.

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.

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.

142:7.105. Com­pan­ion­ship and loy­alty. The af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther holds in­ti­mate and lov­ing in­ter­course with his chil­dren. Al­ways is his ear open to their pe­ti­tions; he is ever ready to share their hard­ships and as­sist them over their dif­fi­cul­ties. The fa­ther is su­premely in­ter­ested in the pro­gres­sive wel­fare of his progeny.

• value of families › built on tolerance, patience, forgiveness

142:7.116. Love and mercy. A com­pas­sion­ate fa­ther is freely for­giv­ing; fa­thers do not hold venge­ful mem­o­ries against their chil­dren. Fa­thers are not like judges, en­e­mies, or cred­i­tors. Real fam­i­lies are built upon tol­er­ance, pa­tience, and for­give­ness.

142:7.127. Pro­vi­sion for the fu­ture. Tem­po­ral fa­thers like to leave an in­her­i­tance for their sons. The fam­ily con­tin­ues from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other. Death only ends one gen­er­a­tion to mark the be­gin­ning of an­other. Death ter­mi­nates an in­di­vid­ual life but not nec­es­sar­ily the fam­ily.

142:7.13For hours the Mas­ter dis­cussed the ap­pli­ca­tion of these fea­tures of fam­ily life to the re­la­tions of man, the earth child, to God, the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. And this was his con­clu­sion: “This en­tire re­la­tion­ship of a son to the Fa­ther, I know in per­fec­tion, for all that you must at­tain of son­ship in the eter­nal fu­ture I have now al­ready at­tained. The Son of Man is pre­pared to as­cend to the right hand of the Fa­ther, so that in me is the way now open still wider for all of you to see God and, ere you have fin­ished the glo­ri­ous pro­gres­sion, to be­come per­fect, even as your Fa­ther in heaven is per­fect.”

142:7.14When the apos­tles heard these startling words, they re­called the pro­nounce­ments which John made at the time of Je­sus’ bap­tism, and they also vividly re­called this ex­pe­ri­ence in con­nec­tion with their preach­ing and teach­ing sub­se­quent to the Mas­ter’s death and res­ur­rec­tion.

142:7.15Je­sus is a di­vine Son, one in the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther’s full con­fi­dence. He had been with the Fa­ther and com­pre­hended him fully. He had now lived his earth life to the full sat­is­fac­tion of the Fa­ther, and this in­car­na­tion in the flesh had en­abled him fully to com­pre­hend man. Je­sus was the per­fec­tion of man; he had at­tained just such per­fec­tion as all true be­liev­ers are des­tined to at­tain in him and through him. Je­sus re­vealed a God of per­fec­tion to man and pre­sented in him­self the per­fected son of the realms to God.

142:7.16Al­though Je­sus dis­coursed for sev­eral hours, Thomas was not yet sat­is­fied, for he said: “But, Mas­ter, we do not find that the Fa­ther in heaven al­ways deals kindly and mer­ci­fully with us. Many times we griev­ously suf­fer on earth, and not al­ways are our prayers an­swered. Where do we fail to grasp the mean­ing of your teach­ing?”

142:7.17Je­sus replied: “Thomas, Thomas, how long be­fore you will ac­quire the abil­ity to lis­ten with the ear of the spirit? How long will it be be­fore you dis­cern that this king­dom is a spir­i­tual king­dom, and that my Fa­ther is also a spir­i­tual be­ing? Do you not un­der­stand that I am teach­ing you as spir­i­tual chil­dren in the spirit fam­ily of heaven, of which the fa­ther­head is an in­fi­nite and eter­nal spirit? Will you not al­low me to use the earth fam­ily as an il­lus­tra­tion of di­vine re­la­tion­ships with­out so lit­er­ally ap­ply­ing my teach­ing to ma­te­rial af­fairs? In your minds can­not you sep­a­rate the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom from the ma­te­rial, so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal prob­lems of the age? When I speak the lan­guage of the spirit, why do you in­sist on trans­lat­ing my mean­ing into the lan­guage of the flesh just be­cause I pre­sume to em­ploy com­mon­place and lit­eral re­la­tion­ships for pur­poses of il­lus­tra­tion? My chil­dren, I im­plore that you cease to ap­ply the teach­ing of the king­dom of the spirit to the sor­did af­fairs of slav­ery, pov­erty, houses, and lands, and to the ma­te­rial prob­lems of hu­man eq­uity and jus­tice. These tem­po­ral mat­ters are the con­cern of the men of this world, and while in a way they af­fect all men, you have been called to rep­re­sent me in the world, even as I rep­re­sent my Fa­ther. You are spir­i­tual am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual king­dom, spe­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the spirit Fa­ther. By this time it should be pos­si­ble for me to in­struct you as full-grown men of the spirit king­dom. Must I ever ad­dress you only as chil­dren? Will you never grow up in spirit per­cep­tion? Nev­er­the­less, I love you and will bear with you, even to the very end of our as­so­ci­a­tion in the flesh. And even then shall my spirit go be­fore you into all the world.”

• nature of family › members reap benefits, suffer consequences of others’ actions

145:2.8“No more should you fear that God will pun­ish a na­tion for the sin of an in­di­vid­ual; nei­ther will the Fa­ther in heaven pun­ish one of his be­liev­ing chil­dren for the sins of a na­tion, al­beit the in­di­vid­ual mem­ber of any fam­ily must of­ten suf­fer the ma­te­rial con­se­quences of fam­ily mis­takes and group trans­gres­sions. Do you not re­al­ize that the hope of a bet­ter na­tion—or a bet­ter world—is bound up in the prog­ress and en­light­en­ment of the in­di­vid­ual?”

• sorrow when some in f. accept and others reject gospel

150:4.3“Are not two spar­rows sold for a penny? And yet I de­clare that not one of them is for­got­ten in God’s sight. Know you not that the very hairs of your head are all num­bered? Fear not, there­fore; you are of more value than a great many spar­rows. Be not ashamed of my teach­ing; go forth pro­claim­ing peace and good will, but be not de­ceived—peace will not al­ways at­tend your preach­ing. I came to bring peace on earth, but when men re­ject my gift, di­vi­sion and tur­moil re­sult. When all of a fam­ily re­ceive the gospel of the king­dom, truly peace abides in that house; but when some of the fam­ily en­ter the king­dom and oth­ers re­ject the gospel, such di­vi­sion can pro­duce only sor­row and sad­ness. La­bor earnestly to save the whole fam­ily lest a man’s foes be­come those of his own house­hold. But, when you have done your ut­most for all of ev­ery fam­ily, I de­clare to you that he who loves fa­ther or mother more than this gospel is not wor­thy of the king­dom.”

• value of families › most effective social group; master civilizer

160:2.4Sym­bolic com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween hu­man be­ings pre­de­ter­mines the bring­ing into ex­is­tence of so­cial groups. The most ef­fec­tive of all so­cial groups is the fam­ily, more par­tic­u­larly the two par­ents. Per­sonal af­fec­tion is the spir­i­tual bond which holds to­gether these ma­te­rial as­so­ci­a­tions. Such an ef­fec­tive re­la­tion­ship is also pos­si­ble be­tween two per­sons of the same sex, as is so abun­dantly il­lus­trated in the de­vo­tions of gen­uine friend­ships.

• sorrow when some in f. accept and others reject gospel

165:6.3“But if the ser­vant is sloth­ful and be­gins to say in his heart, ‘My mas­ter de­lays his com­ing,’ and be­gins to mis­treat his fel­low ser­vants and to eat and drink with the drunken, then the lord of that ser­vant will come at a time when he looks not for him and, find­ing him un­faith­ful, will cast him out in dis­grace. There­fore you do well to pre­pare your­selves for that day when you will be vis­ited sud­denly and in an un­ex­pected man­ner. Re­mem­ber, much has been given to you; there­fore will much be re­quired of you. Fiery tri­als are draw­ing near you. I have a bap­tism to be bap­tized with, and I am on watch un­til this is ac­com­plished. You preach peace on earth, but my mis­sion will not bring peace in the ma­te­rial af­fairs of men—not for a time, at least. Di­vi­sion can only be the re­sult where two mem­bers of a fam­ily be­lieve in me and three mem­bers re­ject this gospel. Friends, rel­a­tives, and loved ones are des­tined to be set against each other by the gospel you preach. True, each of these be­liev­ers shall have great and last­ing peace in his own heart, but peace on earth will not come un­til all are will­ing to be­lieve and en­ter into their glo­ri­ous in­her­i­tance of son­ship with God. Nev­er­the­less, go into all the world pro­claim­ing this gospel to all na­tions, to ev­ery man, woman, and child.”

• Jesus › teachings about God based on

188:5.1The cross of Je­sus por­trays the full mea­sure of the su­preme de­vo­tion of the true shep­herd for even the un­wor­thy mem­bers of his flock. It for­ever places all re­la­tions be­tween God and man upon the fam­ily ba­sis. God is the Fa­ther; man is his son. Love, the love of a fa­ther for his son, be­comes the cen­tral truth in the uni­verse re­la­tions of Cre­ator and crea­ture—not the jus­tice of a king which seeks sat­is­fac­tion in the suf­fer­ings and pun­ish­ment of the evil-do­ing sub­ject.

• loyalty to and watchcare over f. is the most sacred human trust

196:0.7The all-con­sum­ing and in­domitable spir­i­tual faith of Je­sus never be­came fa­nat­i­cal, for it never at­tempted to run away with his well-bal­anced in­tel­lec­tual judg­ments con­cern­ing the pro­por­tional val­ues of prac­ti­cal and com­mon­place so­cial, eco­nomic, and moral life sit­u­a­tions. The Son of Man was a splen­didly uni­fied hu­man per­son­al­ity; he was a per­fectly en­dowed di­vine be­ing; he was also mag­nif­i­cently co-or­di­nated as a com­bined hu­man and di­vine be­ing func­tion­ing on earth as a sin­gle per­son­al­ity. Al­ways did the Mas­ter co-or­di­nate the faith of the soul with the wis­dom-ap­praisals of sea­soned ex­pe­ri­ence. Per­sonal faith, spir­i­tual hope, and moral de­vo­tion were al­ways cor­re­lated in a match­less re­li­gious unity of har­mo­nious as­so­ci­a­tion with the keen re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity and sa­cred­ness of all hu­man loy­al­ties—per­sonal honor, fam­ily love, re­li­gious obli­ga­tion, so­cial duty, and eco­nomic ne­ces­sity.