parents

• parent-child relationship is most tender and beautiful in mortal experience

2:6.2Re­li­gion im­plies that the super­world of spirit na­ture is cog­nizant of, and re­spon­sive to, the fun­da­men­tal needs of the hu­man world. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion may be­come eth­i­cal, but only re­vealed re­li­gion be­comes truly and spir­i­tu­ally moral. The olden con­cept that God is a De­ity dom­i­nated by kingly moral­ity was up­stepped by Je­sus to that af­fec­tion­ately touch­ing level of in­ti­mate fam­ily moral­ity of the par­ent-child re­la­tion­ship, than which there is none more ten­der and beau­ti­ful in mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence.

• selflessness inherent in parental love

2:6.4The con­cept of God as a king-judge, al­though it fos­tered a high moral stan­dard and cre­ated a law-re­spect­ing peo­ple as a group, left the in­di­vid­ual be­liever in a sad po­si­tion of in­se­cu­rity re­spect­ing his sta­tus in time and in eter­nity. The later He­brew proph­ets pro­claimed God to be a Fa­ther to Is­rael; Je­sus re­vealed God as the Fa­ther of each hu­man be­ing. The en­tire mor­tal con­cept of God is tran­scen­dently il­lu­mi­nated by the life of Je­sus. Self­less­ness is in­her­ent in pa­ren­tal love. God loves not like a fa­ther, but as a fa­ther. He is the Par­a­dise Fa­ther of ev­ery uni­verse per­son­al­ity.

• relationship with God is Father-child

3:4.7Fi­nite ap­pre­ci­a­tion of in­fi­nite qual­i­ties far tran­scends the log­i­cally lim­ited ca­pac­i­ties of the crea­ture be­cause of the fact that mor­tal man is made in the im­age of God—there lives within him a frag­ment of in­fin­ity. There­fore man’s near­est and dear­est ap­proach to God is by and through love, for God is love. And all of such a unique re­la­tion­ship is an ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence in cos­mic so­ci­ol­ogy, the Cre­ator-crea­ture re­la­tion­ship—the Fa­ther-child af­fec­tion.

• selflessness inherent in parental love

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

• divine love is source of parental love

21:0.2In the vast work of or­ga­niz­ing, evolv­ing, and per­fect­ing a lo­cal uni­verse, these high Sons al­ways en­joy the sus­tain­ing ap­proval of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The re­la­tion­ship of the Cre­ator Sons with their Par­a­dise Fa­ther is touch­ing and su­perla­tive. No doubt the pro­found af­fec­tion of the De­ity par­ents for their di­vine progeny is the well­spring of that beau­ti­ful and well-nigh di­vine love which even mor­tal par­ents bear their chil­dren.

• no ascending mortal can escape parenthood experience

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.

45:6.5The as­cend­ing mid­way crea­tures and the evo­lu­tion­ary ser­a­phim must pass through this par­ent­hood ex­pe­ri­ence in as­so­ci­a­tion with the Ma­te­rial Sons and Daugh­ters of the sys­tem head­quar­ters. Thus do such non­re­pro­duc­ing as­cend­ers ob­tain the ex­pe­ri­ence of par­ent­hood by as­sist­ing the Je­ru­sem Adams and Eves in rear­ing and train­ing their progeny.

45:6.6All mor­tal sur­vivors who have not ex­pe­ri­enced par­ent­hood on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds must also ob­tain this nec­es­sary train­ing while so­journ­ing in the homes of the Je­ru­sem Ma­te­rial Sons and as pa­ren­tal as­so­ciates of these su­perb fa­thers and moth­ers. This is true ex­cept in so far as such mor­tals have been able to com­pen­sate their de­fi­cien­cies on the sys­tem nurs­ery lo­cated on the first tran­si­tional-cul­ture world of Je­ru­sem.

• no mortal reproduction after life in flesh

45:6.7This pro­ba­tion nurs­ery of Sa­ta­nia is main­tained by cer­tain mor­ontia per­son­al­i­ties on the fi­nal­i­ters’ world, one half of the planet be­ing de­voted to this work of child rear­ing. Here are re­ceived and re­assem­bled cer­tain chil­dren of sur­viv­ing mor­tals, such as those off­spring who per­ished on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds be­fore ac­quir­ing spir­i­tual sta­tus as in­di­vid­u­als. The as­cen­sion of ei­ther of its nat­u­ral par­ents in­sures that such a mor­tal child of the realms will be ac­corded reper­son­al­iza­tion on the sys­tem fi­nal­i­ter planet and there be per­mit­ted to demon­strate by sub­se­quent free­will choice whether or not it elects to fol­low the pa­ren­tal path of mor­tal as­cen­sion. Chil­dren here ap­pear as on the na­tiv­ity world ex­cept for the ab­sence of sex dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion. There is no re­pro­duc­tion of mor­tal kind af­ter the life ex­pe­ri­ence on the in­hab­ited worlds.

45:6.8Man­sion world stu­dents who have one or more chil­dren in the pro­ba­tion­ary nurs­ery on the fi­nal­i­ters’ world, and who are de­fi­cient in es­sen­tial pa­ren­tal ex­pe­ri­ence, may ap­ply for a Mel­chiz­e­dek per­mit which will ef­fect their tem­po­rary trans­fer from as­cen­sion du­ties on the man­sion worlds to the fi­nal­i­ter world, where they are granted op­por­tu­nity to func­tion as as­so­ciate par­ents to their own and other chil­dren. This ser­vice of pa­ren­tal min­istry may be later ac­cred­ited on Je­ru­sem as the ful­fill­ment of one half of the train­ing which such as­cend­ers are re­quired to un­dergo in the fam­i­lies of the Ma­te­rial Sons and Daugh­ters.

45:6.9The pro­ba­tion nurs­ery it­self is super­vised by one thou­sand cou­ples of Ma­te­rial Sons and Daugh­ters, vol­un­teers from the Je­ru­sem colony of their or­der. They are im­me­di­ately as­sisted by about an equal num­ber of vol­un­teer mid­sonite pa­ren­tal groups who stop off here to ren­der this ser­vice on their way from the mid­sonite world of Sa­ta­nia to the un­re­vealed des­tiny on their spe­cial worlds of reser­va­tion among the fi­nal­i­ter spheres of Sal­ving­ton.

• no ascending mortal can escape parenthood experience

47:1.4On the first man­sion world all sur­vivors must pass the re­quire­ments of the pa­ren­tal com­mis­sion from their na­tive plan­ets. The pres­ent Uran­tia com­mis­sion con­sists of twelve pa­ren­tal cou­ples, re­cently ar­rived, who have had mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence in rear­ing three or more chil­dren to the pubescent age. Ser­vice on this com­mis­sion is ro­ta­tional and is for only ten years as a rule. All who fail to sat­isfy these com­mis­sion­ers as to their pa­ren­tal ex­pe­ri­ence must fur­ther qual­ify by ser­vice in the homes of the Ma­te­rial Sons on Je­ru­sem or in part in the pro­ba­tion­ary nurs­ery on the fi­nal­i­ters’ world.

• no ascending mortal can escape parenthood experience

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.

• instinct to care for feeble infants

63:3.1It was al­most two years from the night of the twins’ de­par­ture from home be­fore their first child was born. They named him Son­tad; and Son­tad was the first crea­ture to be born on Uran­tia who was wrapped in pro­tec­tive cov­er­ings at the time of birth. The hu­man race had be­gun, and with this new evo­lu­tion there ap­peared the in­stinct prop­erly to care for the in­creas­ingly en­fee­bled in­fants which would char­ac­ter­ize the pro­gres­sive de­vel­op­ment of mind of the in­tel­lec­tual or­der as con­trasted with the more purely an­i­mal type.

• rewarded by excellency of their children

71:3.12In ad­vanced states, po­lit­i­cal ser­vice is es­teemed as the high­est de­vo­tion of the cit­i­zenry. The great­est am­bi­tion of the wis­est and no­blest of cit­i­zens is to gain civil rec­og­ni­tion, to be elected or ap­pointed to some po­si­tion of gov­ern­men­tal trust, and such gov­ern­ments con­fer their high­est hon­ors of rec­og­ni­tion for ser­vice upon their civil and so­cial ser­vants. Hon­ors are next be­stowed in the or­der named upon philoso­phers, ed­u­ca­tors, sci­en­tists, in­dus­tri­al­ists, and mil­i­tarists. Par­ents are duly re­warded by the ex­cel­lency of their chil­dren, and purely re­li­gious lead­ers, be­ing am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual king­dom, re­ceive their real re­wards in an­other world.

• privilege of giving sons to the Father

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.

• disclose to children the love of Paradise Parent

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.

• highly educational and disciplinary responsibilities of parenthood

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.

• children commanded to honor p.

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.’

• children commanded to honor p.

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.’

• importance to children of love between p.

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 commanded to honor p.

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.”

• leaving p. for sake of kingdom

163:3.4And then said Pe­ter, “But, Mas­ter, we have left ev­ery­thing to fol­low you, what then shall we have?” And Je­sus spoke to all of the twelve: “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, there is no man who has left wealth, home, wife, breth­ren, par­ents, or chil­dren for my sake and for the sake of the king­dom of heaven who shall not re­ceive man­i­fold more in this world, per­haps with some per­se­cu­tions, and in the world to come eter­nal life. But many who are first shall be last, while the last shall of­ten be first. The Fa­ther deals with his crea­tures in ac­cor­dance with their needs and in obe­di­ence to his just laws of mer­ci­ful and lov­ing con­sid­er­a­tion for the wel­fare of a uni­verse.

• affectionate p. never called upon to forgive children

174:1.2Af­ter a short si­lence Je­sus looked sig­nif­i­cantly at all four and an­swered: “My breth­ren, you err in your opin­ions be­cause you do not com­pre­hend the na­ture of those in­ti­mate and lov­ing re­la­tions be­tween the crea­ture and the Cre­ator, be­tween man and God. You fail to grasp that un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy which the wise par­ent en­ter­tains for his im­ma­ture and some­times erring child. It is in­deed doubt­ful whether in­tel­li­gent and af­fec­tion­ate par­ents are ever called upon to for­give an av­er­age and nor­mal child. Un­der­stand­ing re­la­tion­ships as­so­ci­ated with at­ti­tudes of love ef­fec­tively pre­vent all those es­trange­ments which later ne­ces­si­tate the read­just­ment of re­pen­tance by the child with for­give­ness by the par­ent.

• importance to children of love between p.

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.

• relationship with God is Father-child

196:3.35And God-con­scious­ness is equiv­a­lent to the in­te­gra­tion of the self with the uni­verse, and on its high­est lev­els of spir­i­tual re­al­ity. Only the spirit con­tent of any value is im­per­ish­able. Even that which is true, beau­ti­ful, and good may not per­ish in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. If man does not choose to sur­vive, then does the sur­viv­ing Ad­juster con­serve those re­al­i­ties born of love and nur­tured in ser­vice. And all these things are a part of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The Fa­ther is liv­ing love, and this life of the Fa­ther is in his Sons. And the spirit of the Fa­ther is in his Sons’ sons—mor­tal men. When all is said and done, the Fa­ther idea is still the high­est hu­man con­cept of God.