fathers

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.

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.

175:1.10“While you should honor your rulers and rev­er­ence your teach­ers, you should call no man Fa­ther in the spir­i­tual sense, for there is one who is your Fa­ther, even God. Nei­ther should you seek to lord it over your breth­ren in the king­dom. Re­mem­ber, I have taught you that he who would be great­est among you should be­come the server of all. If you pre­sume to ex­alt your­selves be­fore God, you will cer­tainly be hum­bled; but whoso truly hum­bles him­self will surely be ex­alted. Seek in your daily lives, not self-glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, but the glory of God. In­tel­li­gently sub­or­di­nate your own wills to the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

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.

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.

177:2.7It 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.

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.”

171:2.2“You who would fol­low af­ter me from this time on, must be will­ing to pay the price of whole­hearted ded­i­ca­tion to the do­ing of my Fa­ther’s will. If you would be my dis­ci­ples, you must be will­ing to for­sake fa­ther, mother, wife, chil­dren, broth­ers, and sis­ters. If any one of you would now be my dis­ci­ple, you must be will­ing to give up even your life just as the Son of Man is about to of­fer up his life for the com­ple­tion of the mis­sion of do­ing the Fa­ther’s will on earth and in the flesh.

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.

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

51:6.6With the pass­ing of cen­turies, through the amal­ga­ma­tion of their progeny with the races of men, this same Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter be­come ac­cepted as the com­mon an­ces­tors of man­kind, the com­mon par­ents of the now blended de­scen­dants of the evo­lu­tion­ary races. It is in­tended that mor­tals who start out from an in­hab­ited world have the ex­pe­ri­ence of rec­og­niz­ing seven fa­thers:

51:6.71. The bi­o­logic fa­ther—the fa­ther in the flesh.

51:6.82. The fa­ther of the realm—the Plan­e­tary Adam.

51:6.93. The fa­ther of the spheres—the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign.

51:6.104. The Most High Fa­ther—the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­ther.

51:6.115. The uni­verse Fa­ther—the Cre­ator Son and su­preme ruler of the lo­cal cre­ations.

51:6.126. The su­per-Fa­thers—the An­cients of Days who gov­ern the super­uni­verse.

51:6.137. The spirit or Ha­vona Fa­ther—the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, who dwells on Par­a­dise and be­stows his spirit to live and work in the minds of the lowly crea­tures who in­habit the uni­verse of uni­verses.