recognition

• Father never imposes arbitrary

1:1.2The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther never im­poses any form of ar­bi­trary rec­og­ni­tion, for­mal wor­ship, or slav­ish ser­vice upon the in­tel­li­gent will crea­tures of the uni­verses. The evo­lu­tion­ary in­hab­i­tants of the worlds of time and space must of them­selves—in their own hearts—rec­og­nize, love, and vol­un­tar­ily wor­ship him. The Cre­ator re­fuses to co­erce or com­pel the sub­mis­sion of the spir­i­tual free wills of his ma­te­rial crea­tures. The af­fec­tion­ate ded­i­ca­tion of the hu­man will to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will is man’s choic­est gift to God; in fact, such a con­se­cra­tion of crea­ture will con­sti­tutes man’s only pos­si­ble gift of true value to the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. In God, man lives, moves, and has his be­ing; there is noth­ing which man can give to God ex­cept this choos­ing to abide by the Fa­ther’s will, and such de­ci­sions, ef­fected by the in­tel­li­gent will crea­tures of the uni­verses, con­sti­tute the re­al­ity of that true wor­ship which is so sat­is­fy­ing to the love-dom­i­nated na­ture of the Cre­ator Fa­ther.

• incessant clamoring of inescapable self for

3:5.138. Is un­selfish­ness—the spirit of self-for­get­ful­ness—de­sir­able? Then must mor­tal man live face to face with the in­ces­sant clam­or­ing of an in­escapable self for recog­ni­tion and honor. Man could not dy­nam­i­cally choose the di­vine life if there were no self-life to for­sake. Man could never lay sav­ing hold on right­eous­ness if there were no po­ten­tial evil to ex­alt and dif­fer­en­ti­ate the good by con­trast.

• indicative of effort and attainment is granted to all

20:8.3The Teacher Sons com­pose the fac­ul­ties who ad­min­is­ter all ex­am­i­na­tions and con­duct all tests for the qual­i­fi­ca­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of all sub­or­di­nate phases of uni­verse ser­vice, from the du­ties of out­post sen­tinels to those of star stu­dents. They con­duct an age­long course of train­ing, rang­ing from the plan­e­tary courses up to the high Col­lege of Wis­dom lo­cated on Sal­ving­ton. Rec­og­ni­tion in­dica­tive of ef­fort and at­tain­ment is granted to all, as­cend­ing mor­tal or am­bi­tious cheru­bim, who com­plete these ad­ven­tures in wis­dom and truth.

• honors bestowed by advanced states

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.

• additional votes conferred in continental nation as

72:9.32. Upon nom­i­na­tion by the state gov­er­nors or by the re­gional ex­ec­u­tives and by the man­date of the re­gional su­preme coun­cils, in­di­vid­u­als who have ren­dered great ser­vice to so­ci­ety, or who have demon­strated ex­traor­di­nary wis­dom in gov­ern­ment ser­vice, may have ad­di­tional votes con­ferred upon them not of­tener than ev­ery five years and not to ex­ceed nine such super­fran­chises. The max­i­mum suf­frage of any mul­ti­ple voter is ten. Sci­en­tists, in­ven­tors, teach­ers, philoso­phers, and spir­i­tual lead­ers are also thus rec­og­nized and hon­ored with aug­mented po­lit­i­cal power. These ad­vanced civic priv­i­leges are con­ferred by the state and re­gional su­preme coun­cils much as de­grees are be­stowed by the spe­cial col­leges, and the re­cip­i­ents are proud to at­tach the sym­bols of such civic rec­og­ni­tion, along with their other de­grees, to their lists of per­sonal achieve­ments.

• accord generous r. for praiseworthy things

100:1.8Re­li­gious habits of think­ing and act­ing are con­trib­u­tory to the econ­omy of spir­i­tual growth. One can de­velop re­li­gious pre­dis­po­si­tions to­ward fa­vor­able re­ac­tion to spir­i­tual stim­uli, a sort of con­di­tioned spir­i­tual re­flex. Habits which fa­vor re­li­gious growth em­brace cul­ti­vated sen­si­tiv­ity to di­vine val­ues, rec­og­ni­tion of re­li­gious liv­ing in oth­ers, re­flec­tive med­i­ta­tion on cos­mic mean­ings, wor­ship­ful prob­lem solv­ing, shar­ing one’s spir­i­tual life with one’s fel­lows, avoid­ance of self­ish­ness, re­fusal to pre­sume on di­vine mercy, liv­ing as in the pres­ence of God. The fac­tors of re­li­gious growth may be in­ten­tional, but the growth it­self is un­vary­ingly un­con­scious.

• Jesus › recognized truth in teachings of others

100:7.5Je­sus’ orig­i­nal­ity was un­sti­fled. He was not bound by tra­di­tion or hand­i­capped by en­slave­ment to nar­row con­ven­tion­al­ity. He spoke with un­doubted con­fi­dence and taught with ab­so­lute au­thor­ity. But his su­perb orig­i­nal­ity did not cause him to over­look the gems of truth in the teach­ings of his pre­de­ces­sors and con­tem­po­raries. And the most orig­i­nal of his teach­ings was the em­pha­sis of love and mercy in the place of fear and sac­ri­fice.

• humbly receive credit from Adjuster’s endeavors

110:7.10Dur­ing the mak­ing and break­ing of a con­tact be­tween the mor­tal mind of a des­tiny re­servist and the plan­e­tary super­vi­sors, some­times the in­dwelling Ad­juster is so sit­u­ated that it be­comes pos­si­ble to trans­mit a mes­sage to the mor­tal part­ner. Not long since, on Uran­tia, such a mes­sage was trans­mit­ted by a self-act­ing Ad­juster to the hu­man as­so­ciate, a mem­ber of the re­serve corps of des­tiny. This mes­sage was in­tro­duced by these words: “And now, with­out in­jury or jeop­ardy to the sub­ject of my so­lic­i­tous de­vo­tion and with­out in­tent to over­chas­tise or dis­cour­age, for me, make rec­ord of this my plea to him.” Then fol­lowed a beau­ti­fully touch­ing and ap­peal­ing ad­mo­ni­tion. Among other things, the Ad­juster pleaded “that he more faith­fully give me his sin­cere co-op­er­a­tion, more cheer­fully en­dure the tasks of my em­place­ment, more faith­fully carry out the pro­gram of my ar­range­ment, more pa­tiently go through the tri­als of my se­lec­tion, more per­sis­tently and cheer­fully tread the path of my choos­ing, more humbly re­ceive credit that may ac­crue as a re­sult of my cease­less en­deav­ors—thus trans­mit my ad­mo­ni­tion to the man of my in­dwelling. Upon him I be­stow the su­preme de­vo­tion and af­fec­tion of a di­vine spirit. And say fur­ther to my beloved sub­ject that I will func­tion with wis­dom and power un­til the very end, un­til the last earth strug­gle is over; I will be true to my per­son­al­ity trust. And I ex­hort him to sur­vival, not to dis­ap­point me, not to de­prive me of the re­ward of my pa­tient and in­tense strug­gle. On the hu­man will our achieve­ment of per­son­al­ity de­pends. Cir­cle by cir­cle I have pa­tiently as­cended this hu­man mind, and I have tes­ti­mony that I am meet­ing the ap­proval of the chief of my kind. Cir­cle by cir­cle I am pass­ing on to judg­ment. I await with plea­sure and with­out ap­pre­hen­sion the roll call of des­tiny; I am pre­pared to sub­mit all to the tri­bu­nals of the An­cients of Days.”

• destiny reservists willing to serve without

114:7.52. Whole­hearted ded­i­ca­tion to some spe­cial so­cial, eco­nomic, po­lit­i­cal, spir­i­tual, or other cause, cou­pled with will­ing­ness to serve with­out hu­man rec­og­ni­tion and re­wards.

• seek no unearned r.

156:5.19Avoid dis­hon­esty and un­fair­ness in all your ef­forts to preach truth and pro­claim the gospel. Seek no un­earned rec­og­ni­tion and crave no un­de­served sym­pa­thy. Love, freely re­ceive from both di­vine and hu­man sources re­gard­less of your deserts, and love freely in re­turn. But in all other things re­lated to honor and adu­la­tion seek only that which hon­estly be­longs to you.

• accord generous r. for praiseworthy things

159:3.3In bring­ing men into the king­dom, do not lessen or de­stroy their self-re­spect. While over­much self-re­spect may de­stroy proper hu­mil­ity and end in pride, con­ceit, and ar­ro­gance, the loss of self-re­spect of­ten ends in paral­y­sis of the will. It is the pur­pose of this gospel to re­store self-re­spect to those who have lost it and to re­strain it in those who have it. Make not the mis­take of only con­demn­ing the wrongs in the lives of your pupils; re­mem­ber also to ac­cord gen­er­ous rec­og­ni­tion for the most praise­wor­thy things in their lives. For­get not that I will stop at noth­ing to re­store self-re­spect to those who have lost it, and who re­ally de­sire to re­gain it.

• essential to development of character

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

• Jesus › generously acknowledged faith in others

161:2.54. The unique­ness of his char­ac­ter and the per­fec­tion of his emo­tional con­trol con­vince us that he is a com­bi­na­tion of hu­man­ity and di­vin­ity. He un­fail­ingly re­sponds to the spec­ta­cle of hu­man need; suf­fer­ing never fails to ap­peal to him. His com­pas­sion is moved alike by phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing, men­tal an­guish, or spir­i­tual sor­row. He is quick to rec­og­nize and gen­er­ous to ac­knowl­edge the pres­ence of faith or any other grace in his fel­low men. He is so just and fair and at the same time so mer­ci­ful and con­sid­er­ate. He grieves over the spir­i­tual ob­sti­nacy of the peo­ple and re­joices when they con­sent to see the light of truth.