opportunities

130:1.2One day af­ter the evening meal Je­sus and the young Phil­is­tine strolled down by the sea, and Ga­diah, not know­ing that this “scribe of Da­mas­cus” was so well versed in the He­brew tra­di­tions, pointed out to Je­sus the ship land­ing from which it was re­puted that Jonah had em­barked on his ill-fated voy­age to Tarshish. And when he had con­cluded his re­marks, he asked Je­sus this ques­tion: “But do you sup­pose the big fish re­ally did swal­low Jonah?” Je­sus per­ceived that this young man’s life had been tremen­dously in­flu­enced by this tra­di­tion, and that its con­tem­pla­tion had im­pressed upon him the folly of try­ing to run away from duty; Je­sus there­fore said noth­ing that would sud­denly de­stroy the foun­da­tions of Ga­diah’s pres­ent mo­ti­va­tion for prac­ti­cal liv­ing. In an­swer­ing this ques­tion, Je­sus said: “My friend, we are all Jon­ahs with lives to live in ac­cor­dance with the will of God, and at all times when we seek to es­cape the pres­ent duty of liv­ing by run­ning away to far-off en­tice­ments, we thereby put our­selves in the im­me­di­ate con­trol of those in­flu­ences which are not di­rected by the pow­ers of truth and the forces of righ­teous­ness. The flight from duty is the sac­ri­fice of truth. The es­cape from the ser­vice of light and life can only re­sult in those dis­tress­ing con­flicts with the dif­fi­cult whales of self­ish­ness which lead even­tu­ally to dark­ness and death un­less such God-for­sak­ing Jon­ahs shall turn their hearts, even when in the very depths of de­spair, to seek af­ter God and his good­ness. And when such dis­heart­ened souls sin­cerely seek for God—hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness—there is noth­ing that can hold them in fur­ther cap­tiv­ity. No mat­ter into what great depths they may have fallen, when they seek the light with a whole heart, the spirit of the Lord God of heaven will de­liver them from their cap­tiv­ity; the evil cir­cum­stances of life will spew them out upon the dry land of fresh op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­newed ser­vice and wiser liv­ing.”

81:5.6Might does not make right, but it does en­force the com­monly rec­og­nized rights of each suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tion. The prime mis­sion of gov­ern­ment is the def­i­ni­tion of the right, the just and fair reg­u­la­tion of class dif­fer­ences, and the en­force­ment of equal­ity of op­por­tu­nity un­der the rules of law. Ev­ery hu­man right is as­so­ci­ated with a so­cial duty; group priv­i­lege is an in­sur­ance mech­a­nism which un­fail­ingly de­mands the full pay­ment of the ex­act­ing pre­mi­ums of group ser­vice. And group rights, as well as those of the in­di­vid­ual, must be pro­tected, in­clud­ing the reg­u­la­tion of the sex propen­sity.

130:6.3By this time the young man very much de­sired to talk with Je­sus, and he knelt at his feet im­plor­ing Je­sus to help him, to show him the way of es­cape from his world of per­sonal sor­row and de­feat. Said Je­sus: “My friend, arise! Stand up like a man! You may be sur­rounded with small en­e­mies and be re­tarded by many ob­sta­cles, but the big things and the real things of this world and the uni­verse are on your side. The sun rises ev­ery morn­ing to salute you just as it does the most pow­er­ful and pros­per­ous man on earth. Look—you have a strong body and pow­er­ful mus­cles—your phys­i­cal equip­ment is bet­ter than the av­er­age. Of course, it is just about use­less while you sit out here on the moun­tain­side and grieve over your mis­for­tunes, real and fan­cied. But you could do great things with your body if you would has­ten off to where great things are wait­ing to be done. You are try­ing to run away from your un­happy self, but it can­not be done. You and your prob­lems of liv­ing are real; you can­not es­cape them as long as you live. But look again, your mind is clear and ca­pa­ble. Your strong body has an in­tel­li­gent mind to di­rect it. Set your mind at work to solve its prob­lems; teach your in­tel­lect to work for you; refuse longer to be dom­i­nated by fear like an un­think­ing an­i­mal. Your mind should be your coura­geous ally in the so­lu­tion of your life prob­lems rather than your be­ing, as you have been, its ab­ject fear-slave and the bond ser­vant of de­pres­sion and de­feat. But most valu­able of all, your po­ten­tial of real achieve­ment is the spirit which lives within you, and which will stim­u­late and in­spire your mind to con­trol it­self and ac­ti­vate the body if you will re­lease it from the fet­ters of fear and thus en­able your spir­i­tual na­ture to be­gin your de­liv­er­ance from the evils of in­ac­tion by the power-pres­ence of liv­ing faith. And then, forth­with, will this faith van­quish fear of men by the com­pelling pres­ence of that new and all-dom­i­nat­ing love of your fel­lows which will so soon fill your soul to over­flow­ing be­cause of the con­scious­ness which has been born in your heart that you are a child of God.

28:6.165. The Sanc­tity of Ser­vice. The priv­i­lege of ser­vice im­me­di­ately fol­lows the dis­cov­ery of trust­wor­thi­ness. Noth­ing can stand be­tween you and op­por­tu­nity for in­creased ser­vice ex­cept your own un­trust­wor­thi­ness, your lack of ca­pac­ity for ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the solem­nity of trust.

71:3.9A moral so­ci­ety should aim to pre­serve the self-re­spect of its cit­i­zenry and af­ford ev­ery nor­mal in­di­vid­ual ad­e­quate op­por­tu­nity for self-re­al­iza­tion. Such a plan of so­cial achieve­ment would yield a cul­tural so­ci­ety of the high­est or­der. So­cial evo­lu­tion should be en­cour­aged by gov­ern­men­tal super­vi­sion which ex­er­cises a min­i­mum of reg­u­la­tive con­trol. That state is best which co-or­di­nates most while gov­ern­ing least.

48:6.36Even as mor­tals, so have these an­gels been fa­ther to many dis­ap­point­ments, and they will point out that some­times your most dis­ap­point­ing dis­ap­point­ments have be­come your great­est bless­ings. Some­times the plant­ing of a seed ne­ces­si­tates its death, the death of your fond­est hopes, be­fore it can be re­born to bear the fruits of new life and new op­por­tu­nity. And from them you will learn to suf­fer less through sor­row and dis­ap­point­ment, first, by mak­ing fewer per­sonal plans con­cern­ing other per­son­al­i­ties, and then, by ac­cept­ing your lot when you have faith­fully per­formed your duty.

40:7.5Fu­sion with a frag­ment of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is equiv­a­lent to a di­vine val­i­da­tion of even­tual Par­a­dise at­tain­ment, and such Ad­juster-fused mor­tals are the only class of hu­man be­ings who all tra­verse the Ha­vona cir­cuits and find God on Par­a­dise. To the Ad­juster-fused mor­tal the ca­reer of uni­ver­sal ser­vice is wide open. What dig­nity of des­tiny and glory of at­tain­ment await ev­ery one of you! Do you fully ap­pre­ci­ate what has been done for you? Do you com­pre­hend the grandeur of the heights of eter­nal achieve­ment which are spread out be­fore you?—even you who now trudge on in the lowly path of life through your so-called “vale of tears”?