I recently read an article about a series of billboards which question Christian beliefs, posted in Florida, Ohio, and New Jersey by American Atheists. The signs prominently feature pictures of Jesus, Santa Claus, and devil images, and ask, “what myths do you see?”  According to American Atheists, the purpose of the campaign is not to attack Christians but to encourage them to ask themselves why one god (i.e. Jesus) is different from gods they call myths (i.e. Neptune).

The responsive outrage expressed by church officials and Christians alike is a timely reminder of the urgent need to remedy the superstition and error in Christian beliefs.  Science, archaeological discoveries, and the latest planetary revelation in The Urantia Book, bring us up to date: They expose and expand the inherent truth in Christian beliefs which can revive in humankind the vibrant living faith exhibited by early Christians.

1.  It is true that Jesus was not born on December 25th.   Archaeological discoveries repeatedly have pointed to the summer of 6 or 7 BC as the most probable date for the birth of Jesus.  Epochal  revelation confirms that Jesus was born on August 21, 7 BC.

2.  It is true that there was no bright star in the East when Jesus was born.  The extraordinary astronomic conjunctions that occurred in May, September and December of 7 BC inspired the appealing legend of the star of Bethlehem.

3. It is true that the three men who visited Jesus were not magi - wise men who used their astrological knowledge to lead them to the predicted king in the Land of Israel.  Rather they were three priests from Ur who were led to Jesus by the father of John the Baptist when Jesus was three weeks old.  They “had been told by a strange religious teacher of their country that he had a had a dream in which he was informed that ‘the light of life’ was about to appear on earth as a babe and among the Jews.”

4.  It is true that there was no virgin birth. Jesus was conceived with the participation of a human father.  Mary and Joseph had been married for months before the conception of Jesus.  Jesus was their first child and they eventually had nine children.

Removal of superstition and error in the Christmas story in no way diminishes its power to inspire; Jesus was a human and divine personality, who on Earth revealed the personality of the Universal Father to all humanity.

Our challenge is to harmonize what we know with the facts of science and the wisdom of a planetary revelation. To the believer this includes questioning the tenets of religion without losing faith in God or spiritual ideals; to explore objectively the latest planetary revelation in search of deeper meanings and values. The atheist’s challenge is to be open to the possibility of the reality of God - to be open to exploring an epochal revelation which presents unique answers to the big questions:  Where are we? Who are we? and why are we? - answers that can be found nowhere else.  And the writings in The Urantia Book additionally provide a unique and compelling portrayal of the life and teachings of Jesus which inspires the believer and non-believer alike to live a more meaningful life.

The alternative: believers can hold on to the error and superstition in their beliefs;  atheists can hold on to their assurance that there is no God.  Both can remain smug in their myopic and crystallized thinking - perpetuating the gulf between them.

One option maintains the status quo, the other presents new vistas of time and eternity that can dispel confusion and fuel the spiritual power of transformation.

“Experts” argued back and forth about the pros and cons of regulation without the slightest consideration to the question: Are increasing regulations systemic of a self-serving society?  Most regulations are the result of the need for standards, but many stem from corruption or corner cutting to enhance the bottom line of the balance sheet. 

I believe it is. Freedom from regulation, like freedom from violence, greed, tyranny, and intolerance, is the gradual result in a nation whose citizenry is increasingly committed to the pursuit of wisdom and the cultivation of an honest and loyal personality.  Liberty without a growing ability to treat others as we are willing to be treated is unrealistic and unlikely.  Today we are experiencing the fruit of our collective emergence  as a self-serving nation, reflected in our troubled society where the advancement of science and technology has eclipsed the stagnation of morals and values.

So what needs to be done?  How can we improve the mores of our society so that we can regain the trust in one another and the integrity in our actions so needed to peel off layer upon layer of regulation?

I believe the answer lies in one very simple but increasingly ignored action:   We live in a country where God has been replaced with narcissism. We must strive to put God back where God belongs - in our hearts and minds.   And we do this  most effectively by being open to discovering  new meanings in our understanding of God and the universe so that we may enliven the passion and appreciation for God that moves us to build a philosophy of universal concepts that may be shared by all.  Increasing  unity in the understanding of these universal and spiritual concepts has the potential to break through the philosophic chaos and spiritual stagnation that grips America today.

Exploring our beliefs in the light of the revealed teachings in The Urantia Book is the first most decisive step in fostering unity in the comprehension of the relationships between the physical and the spiritual. By expanding the concept of God and the universe, elaborating upon the uniqueness of personality, and presenting critical distinctions between soul and spirit, this book brings new depth to the study of philosophy and theology.  The concepts in The Urantia Book gain greater significance when reconciled with existing knowledge.  Heaven Is Not the Last Stop provides this reconciliation. The expanded perspectives in The Urantia Book and Heaven Is Not the Last Stop challenge many belief systems, including present-day Christianity. Like any challenge, the ideas presented in these books can be perceived as an obstacle, a heresy, or an opportunity. Approached as an opportunity, they can serve as a touchstone to uplift our belief systems. And through this achievement, one person at a time, decisions and actions will begin to reflect the trustworthiness and loyalty that fosters less involvement of government in the lives of citizens.

An “enduring” State is founded on culture, dominated by ideals, and motivated by service attained when its citizens have been raised with the personal commitment to develop a well-balanced personality, leading us to a companion definition for education:

“The acquirement of skills, the pursuit of wisdom, a realization of self, and the attainment of spiritual values.”

To achieve this definition, education must cultivate the three endowments of the human mind: intelligence, moral awareness and spiritual insight. Together, these endowments create the harmonious development of the human personality, and bring us the PURPOSE of education:  to be fully empowered to contribute one’s best to the advancement of self and civilization.  Through the development of intelligence we hone our skills and cultivate our reasoning and emotional abilities.

What about moral awareness?  Our expanding social structure has readily adapted to intellectual and scientific growth, but abounding technological achievements have eclipsed the moral ethics that the home institution once provided. And

Ethics is the external social mirror that faithfully reflects the inner development of the members of society.

The home and family - the crowning glory of a long and arduous evolutionary struggle - is the natural social arena for the development of ethics: patience, altruism, forbearance and tolerance, all essential for peace and progress. Home ethics is one of civilization’s only hope for survival.

And spiritual insight?  Living faith is what empowers individuals to elevate morality to the spiritual levels of unselfish service. To constrain living faith in civil interaction is like removing the sails of a sailboat. It is wise to separate religious institutions from education and government, but it is true religion - the desire to find and know God -  that organizes the human personality in an ascent to higher levels of love and devotion, of service and fellowship.

The time is NOW to recognize that the educational concept and definition should include cultivation of the three endowments of the human mind; that modifications to our education system alone will not achieve the result we seek in our children without the edification of home life and the progressive force of living faith.

Meet Revie, the spirited butterfly who reminds us that the gulf between opposing philosophies cannot be bridged without the help of epochal revelation. Only with such a unified and comprehensive worldview can humanity transcend the philosophical chaos and spiritual stagnation that now exists in the midst of unprecedented scientific achievement.

When I look at our world today, the need for spiritual living seems to be more important than ever.

We know that science -which holds that the Big Bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics - does not nurture spiritual growth. We also know that “old religion” - which teaches that the universe and all life is the creation of God - may not survive the 21st century if it keeps refusing to embrace what is revealed by scientific discovery. In progressive circles, idealist ontology aims to unite science with religion, proposing that the universe is a manifestation of consciousness, Spirit, or intelligence; such a philosophy appeals to the increasingly secular thinking of our times. But does it promote spiritual living? Can it really inspire the formation of an advanced civilization, something archaic religion and materialistic science have failed to produce?

We can look around and see the answer is no. Partial approaches to the reality of the cosmos must be harmonized to establish unity in our understanding of the universe. This new and righteous vision of our origin, history, and destiny will elevate the quality of our thinking and interactions with one another to truly advance our world.

Is this achievable? Yes it is, but are we willing to take the steps? Questions arise: Am I willing to expand the Big Picture of Existence beyond the model that I currently grasp? Am I ready to search for higher truths outside my comfort zone? Am I willing to explore new and higher spiritual meanings in what I already know? Our egos are stubborn and our minds tend to be lazy, yet planetary progress requires us to develop humility and courage beyond that which we usually muster. Nothing less will advance philosophy and religion to support a growing spiritual culture.

Epochal revelation: the missing link

Revelation is a divine download of knowledge that expands human understanding. Personal revelations, for example, are insights that we receive through study, visions, or reflections on personal beliefs and convictions. Personal revelations have transformed lives and advanced morality throughout the centuries. Scientific discovery, sometimes called public revelation, acts as a stabilizing factor in philosophy and religion by eliminating error and superstition, respectively. However, personal and public revelations are not sufficient to transform a culture, a race, or a world. Only an EPOCHAL REVELATION, periodically imparted to inspire a new era of planetary evolution, can radically expand our knowledge base and reduce confusion in current thinking. There have been five epochal revelations on our planet; the fifth, found in The Urantia Book, powerfully synthesizes and expands science, philosophy, and religion in a unified and comprehensive new framework that uplifts all others. Epochal revelation is a gift to humanity designed to ease the philosophical chaos and heal the spiritual stagnation that thrives in the midst of unprecedented scientific achievement. Epochal revelation fosters a worldview that is harmonious with a glorified cosmic view - a symmetrical integration of science, philosophy, and religion wherein ethics will become dynamic and progressive, alive with universe reality. Ethics is indeed the external social mirror which faithfully reflects the otherwise unobservable progress of inner development. Revelational evolution, therefore, is progressive spiritual living that is characterized by expanded cosmic consciousness and enhanced spiritual perception, achieved through the illumination of epochal revelation.

Please join our Facebook group - Revelational Evolution to explore this concept further.

During these five months I have witnessed his proud and happy eyes look at me when he grasps a concept or performs an activity that he has been trying to master for days or weeks.  His genuine gratefulness is visible in his eyes, and he expresses it with hugs and the words “I love you.”  With every simple breakthrough that sometimes comes so hard,  my heart experiences new depths of love as my mind sees visions of the increasing possibilities for him. 

 For these five months I have truly learned what it means to be dedicated - Emilio would not have it any other way - disallowing any personal endeavors which might encroach on my time with him. It has meant being alert and sensitive to his responses and modifying my own to maintain a needed harmonious and enjoyable interaction. It has meant taking deep breaths not to give in to my own frustrations, or to disconnect because he is angry or frustrated.  It has meant throwing worry to the wind; when you are totally present there is no personal worry space.  On this journey many of the things I learned I already knew intellectually, but working with Emilio intellectual knowledge is not enough.  He mirrors the progress of your soul; the quality of my patience and the love I demonstrate are directly reflected in Emilio’s efforts to progress out of autism.

 Emilio has also taught me much about simplicity.  One toy under the Christmas tree is enough for him, with functionality reigning over brands or quality.  Emilio loves to eat but he smilingly shares with you; he will not guard his food or show you his back to keep you away.  Emilio is never bored - he always finds something to do and is happy playing alone or with others.  He is fully present when learning - never impatient.  And one of Emilio’s most loving traits is his acceptance of everyone.  He will approach the poor or the disabled - even the grouchy - and I have seen his smile and unconditional acceptance touch their hearts.

 I believe that Emilio’s ever-growing responsiveness to his newly learned skills and to his surroundings are the direct result of consistently implementing the techniques and strategies from the Son-rise program as well as showering him with love and acceptance at all times. And this is what it will take in the demanding years ahead for Emilio to reach his full potential, and to outgrow the behavior associated with autism. 

 Personally, I am a different person from the one that arrived here five months ago.  It may not be obvious, but inside I know that this opportunity to raise children from a perspective totally different from my own experience as a young mother has enriched my life in ways I have yet to discover throughout the rest of my life.

In this blog I want to share an article by author Dale Fincher addressing this very question; it is a long article but worth reading. At the end of the article I add some insights I gained through the process of writing my book, Heaven Is Not the Last Stop.

Getting Your Soul in Shape: Discipleship and Spiritual Formation, by Dale Fincher (http://www.soulation.org/articles/fledge_GettingYourSoulInShape.html)

“In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, our self-appointed hero finds a portrait of himself painted by his friend. Admiring his beauty in the painting, Dorian strikes a deal. Selling his soul in exchange for his permanent physical beauty, Dorian wishes his corrupt ways, aging, and destructive habits to mark the painting leaving him youthful and untainted.

The story unfolds of women won and betrayed, heartache, murder, and endless parties. He revisits his painting in the attic and finds the figure growing older, scowling, and ugly. As his life spirals, he remains remarkably youthful and handsome while the portrait grows more grotesque.

By the end, Dorian, so overtaken by the monster staring back at him in the painting, throws a dagger into the canvas. The servants hear a thud from the attic and rush upstairs to find a beautiful painting of their master, and a monster of a man on the floor, dead, with a dagger through his heart.

Oscar Wilde paints for us a picture of what it means to shape our souls. Like Dorian, we are constantly being formed or deformed. Like hiding a painting in the attic, we hide behind our pretty faces, sexy styling, smiles, cut muscles, charm, skills, moral talk, religious clichés, and even makeup. Meanwhile, our souls are taking new forms.

I often watch people walking down the street and imagine their souls striding on the inside. If I could see their souls what would they look like? Are they towering heroes or hunched monsters? Are they like Orcs or Elves? Are they everlasting splendors or eternal horrors?

Most people are aware of their souls in some way. We want to be better people. For example, we often put on music to silence the uncomfortable inner noise or shift our mood. We look for books and inspiration to give us high-octane passion that will fix behaviors and habits, hoping for speedy change, a “microwavable” instant spirituality.

But when I try to change, I find it’s easy to improve superficial things, like dressing nicer or working on my table manners. But this does not change who I am at core and often, my Sunday-morning inspiration fizzles out mid-week. One Christian self-help book recommended dressing up when you leave the house to feel better about yourself and show others you respect them, too. Perhaps this will help a little, but intentionally dressing nicely doesn’t change our hearts. It’s like fresh paint on a car when the engine is dying. Or as Jesus said, it’s like a whitewashed tomb. It’s Dorian’s problem all over again.

Truth is, no matter what we wear, we know we are not as mature, honest, kind or responsible as we could be. We let others down. We mask how we really feel. We get discouraged. We’re lazy about growing. We’re fearful of the future.

Jesus said simply, “By their fruit you will recognize them” (Matt 7:20). How we live, how we think, how we navigate, celebrate, grieve in life are fruit that reveal the kind of soul we have. Dorian hid his painting rather well in the story. But we aren’t as clever as he; most of us reveal fragments of our souls, wherever we go, unaware others can see it. Psychologists call these our “blind-spots.”

The kind of soul we have right now is not an accident. Our souls have been shaped like play-dough for many years, depending on several things. For starters, all of us arrived on this blue planet, born under the rule of the “god of this world” into families that already struggled with broken souls. We inherit family dysfunction of different degrees. This means our souls get shaped by our families and our own distrust in God’s love. We further deform our souls when we think we must always fix ourselves without God’s good help.

As we grow, we choose more intentionally what will shape our souls. Our music, our reading, our friends, our past times, our movies all form or deform our inner selves. Everything we see, taste, read, experience and watch shapes us. How we sift (or not sift) faith and culture-political speeches, media ads, long hours of mediocre television, pastors and Sunday School teachers, friends, hearsay, and ideas that simply pop into our heads-also shapes us.

How we acquire taste for quality or first food, for music that deepens us, for friendships that elevate us also weaves into our souls. Or whether we work hard to live life with deeper spiritual insight. Or if we avoid change by keeping close friends who refuse to grow or listen only to people who agree with us, or avoiding good books with excuses like, “That’s too deep,” when the pages start asking life-changing questions that make us uncomfortable.

And, some, in a delusion to escape dangerous exposure to outside influences, remain sheltered. Yet this also shapes our souls, making us weak and just as out of touch with a healthy soul as living the “the ways of the world.” The quiet man who attends weekly church, like Lars in Lars and the Real Girl, but lives in protected isolation from work to home to church may have a small soul, formed by pain and ignoring love and growth, as poorly shaped as the town drunk or the embezzling businessman.

It’s not like only uber-spiritual people engage in soul formation. Michelle Obama, Lady Gaga and Venus Williams are as engaged in forming their souls as much as the Dalai Lama, Pope Benedict and you and me.

A good, well-formed soul, open to truth at all costs-the kind Jesus invited us to have-is not easy to acquire.

But the easy way ends up harder in the end. Like eating cotton candy, it’s fun at the start. But if candy is your regular food, you invite aches and pains, illness, and bad teeth. We aren’t made to have a fluffy and thin cotton candy soul. And we were not made to float through life paying little heed to our soul’s formation.

Spiritual formation or soul formation are words today that capture what is happening to all of us-to our souls-as we make life’s passage. With all these influences pressing in on us, unavoidable, our bigger question is in what shape am I to be formed? How can I be more appropriately human?

In Biblical terms, this idea is called many things: transformation Rom 12:2, fashioned into new creatures 2 Cor 5:17, “be like Christ [the Messiah]” Rom 8:29, 2 Cor 3:18.

We cannot BE Christ [the Messiah]. We cannot be the king of the whole world, the very Son of God, the all-powerful one who has all-authority in heaven and earth. But the Scripture tells us to be like him. Why him?

Because he is the last Adam, the only fully human example we have. To be like him is to see the world the way he does, to form a healthy soul that sprouts love naturally, to be at peace with God-whom we can know in daily friendship-knowing he is leading at our front and watching our back. To be like him is to be appropriately human, fully yourself, in your own unique personality, abilities, and relationships, pure and holy.

How can our soul formation make us more human? That is, how can we become more like the Messiah? Jesus’ method was through education and imitation, using the gift of his power and presence, so that we take proper shape. In Jesus words, we are to be “disciples” of him.

A disciple is a student. Under a teacher’s tutelage, the student learns and grows and his or her soul takes shape. We note this happening when we spent a day with someone we admire. We learn their habits, how they eat, how they talk about things. The parts we admire, we take on ourselves, at first, as imitation. We learn a better away to approach life. We learn to see the world through their eyes. By the end of the day, our soul is shaped a little by the time we spent with them.

In the near past, the word “discipleship” has been twisted to mean behavior modification (like wearing nice clothes in public) or abstaining from social taboos, like alcohol, short skirts, and movies. This deadened the power in the word “discipleship”, missing the point of holiness and leading to Dorian’s hypocrisy. In fact, you can abstain from wine, short skirts, movies and still have a warped, small, law-ensnared soul. We need to bring life back into discipleship. Thinking of discipleship as “soul formation” sharpens our focus on the work to be done at the root, the health of our souls-the root that produces pure fruit.

As a student of Jesus, two questions are most important to form our souls: What do I think about God? What does God think about me? When the answer is love, our souls are forming in the proper directions and everything else that is good and holy will be built on that.

Love invites us. Love accepts us for who we are and insists we grow great souls. Love gives us safety to work out bad habits, a lab to let everything hang out so we can examine the parts of our soul that need work.

Fear is the opposite of love. Fear keeps our souls hidden, even from ourselves, so we cannot have the safe space to examine ourselves, seek input from others, and become better people like Jesus. Fear tries to manufacture fruit without changing the soul’s root. And fear will often attack soul formation because of the courage it requires to expose a lifetime of hiding.

As we learn a flourishing human life from Jesus, we invite others to join us. In Coffee Shop Conversations, we talk about “discipleship” as “inviting others into the life you enjoy with Jesus.” Healthy-souled people want health for others. Truly loving people invite others to be loving people.

This makes sense in light of the free life Jesus offers. If we enjoy our lives with Jesus, then we’re not trying to make converts to our “Christian club,” we are not concerned about numbers of those we changed, nor worried about fixing someone’s name on the heavenly roster. We’re inviting others as Jesus did-into a fuller life.

As our souls grow wider and deeper, as we become more fully human, we qualify to invite others to pull up a desk next to us in the classroom of life, for our Teacher is speaking.”

We can instinctively and consistently express the fruits of the spirit (love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.) only to the extent that we have consciously and persistently developed our capacity to do so.  We have become experts at “spiritual bypassing - using spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with our painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs.” Growth itself is unconscious, but we need to consciously and persistently provide the favorable conditions for growth, and this means continuous “effort, struggle, conflict, faith, determination, love, loyalty, and progress.” The time that we spend exploring what these words mean to us in our personal lives and also exploring the framework for growing our souls which The Urantia Book provides us, is time well spent. If we want to take living the religion of Jesus to the next level on our planet, we must be willing to develop new habits of thinking and being; we must be willing to cut through spiritual bypassing, and be willing to move out of our comfort zones. This means personal work and is by no means an easy or short-term task; it is, however, a worwhile and fulfilling one.  The last part of my book Heaven Is Not the Last Stop devotes an entire section to this topic.

This week I began training as a volunteer for the Florida Guardian ad Litem program - a partnership of community advocates and professional staff providing a voice on behalf of the state’s abused and neglected children.  During the training I learned that prescription drug abuse by parents is now one of the leading reasons for the need to put their children into foster care; drug use often leads to abusive parenting, sexual assault, and neglect.  Remedial measures for the parents such as counseling, rehab, and anger management workshops are often insufficient, and the children remain in a system in which worker turnover limits the ability to establish and maintain relationships with the children and their families.  That is why the Guardian ad Litem program was started, to provide consistency in a child’s life.  The court-appointed guardian is often the only person consistently advocating for the best interests of a child - ensuring the child has visitation with siblings and is progressing educationally, medically, and emotionally. 

What is disturbing is the following: court-appointed guardians are still only a bandage - a very much needed one at present, but nonetheless a bandage on a mounting social problem - parents are increasingly failing to be an example of honesty, integrity, and respect to their children.

There are many excuses for the deterioration of the family structure; the trend in our times is towards the deinstitutionalization of marriage and a blended or single parent family. With the high rate of divorce more people are choosing to stay single and even become a parent through artificial means. There may be many genuine reasons for breaking up a family unit, but what reason can we invent for not being an example of honesty, integrity, and respect to the children - inside or outside a traditional family arrangement?

The way we treat one another, faithfully reflects the otherwise unobservable progress of our internal spiritual and religious development.  When higher spiritual meanings and values are missing in our lives, dysfunctional behavior becomes generational and the prospects for the marriage institution grow dimmer. This trend is reflected in current statistics. (Although our discussion here focuses mainly on the United States, data about other countries is included for context and comparison.)

In our society today there is an increasing inclination in the younger generation to extend childhood-to play video games every night, hang out with and text friends, and live a life free of responsibility. The cosmic importance of marriage is undervalued; life revolves around self, the tendency toward self-indulgence grows, and the value of unselfishness is ignored.

A study conducted in 2000 by Rutgers University’s National Marriage Project showed that among adults aged 20-29, marriage does not represent the grand social, economic, religious, and public ideals it once did. Ninety-four percent said that finding their soul mate is more important to them than matters of religion, finances, and the ability to be a good parent. According to the study, young Americans are more interested in having fun than in developing lasting relationships that lead to marriage. Marriage is now often seen less as a necessary institution and more as a celebration that brings together family and friends. More marriages are being built on the concept of materialism and romance instead of a life-long partnership of self-effacement, compromise, devotion, and unselfish dedication to the children.

Troubling statistics and other documented trends reflect a breakdown of traditional marriage mores that have served to stabilize society for millennia. 

1.      About one in three Americans will be divorced at least once.[1]

2.       In 2008, 67 percent of children in America ages 0-17 lived with married parents, down from 77 percent in 1980.[2]

3.      Out-of-wedlock births have kept pace with the rise of civil unions. In France, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, and Bulgaria, for example, out-of-wedlock births have passed the 50 percent mark. In the United Kingdom, it is over 40 percent.[3]Unmarried childbearing in the United States reached historic levels in 2007, accounting for 39.7 percent of all births. In Catholic countries while births to married couples are still the norm; the percentage of out-of-wedlock births has doubled in the past decade. [4]

4.      In the United States, more than one million children each year experience the breakup of their families.  In September 30, 2008, there were 463,000 children in foster care as a result of parent abuse/neglect, or living situations.

The lack of commitment and increasing self-absorption between parents is taking a serious toll on children. Children are witnessing violence, the abuse of alcohol and drugs, and a drift in and out of their lives by their parents. The percentage of parents who work together at the significant job of rearing healthy children who have a love for wisdom and a righteous character is decreasing at an alarming rate. Too many children lack a healthy parental role model to emulate for a higher understanding of love and selflessness, trust and respect. Organized religions understand the social implications of such a trend, but myopic dogmas hinder their ability to successfully address this social crisis.

Marriage is what gave humanity the home, and the home is the crowning glory of the whole long and arduous evolutionary struggle. While 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 neighbors.

The amount of loving care and consideration that men and women are willing to bestow upon one another and their children is directly related to their attainment of higher levels of creative spiritual awareness. Selfless affection between two people is the spiritual connection that sustains a marriage and nurtures a family.

The value of family in today’s world of turmoil cannot be overemphasized: civilization is directly dependent on the effective functioning of the family unit. Family life is the ancestor of true morality, of the consciousness of loyalty to duty. The enforced associations of family life stabilize personality and stimulate its growth. 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 love of the heavenly parent. A child best relates to its surroundings by first mastering the child-parent relationship and then by enlarging this concept to embrace the family as a whole. As the mind of the child grows, it is able to adjust to the concept of family relations, relationships of the community and the world, and then to those of the universe.  With the experience of a healthy, stable, and loving parent-child relationship, a child has the framework from which to relate to others lovingly as members of a family.

Marriage is the enterprise of home building, offspring-rearing, mutual culture, and self-improvement - a never-ending work in progress that draws on continually maturing self-understanding. If we committed ourselves to move beyond the comfort zone of our beliefs, build character, and deepen our sensitivity to spirit guidance, we would go a long ways towards halting the current negative trend in the moral health of society.

Marriage and family life represents the highest potentials in human nature, simultaneously providing the ideal avenue for the development and expression of the highest attributes of human personality. The home is the natural social arena wherein the ethics of 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 unity among all people. 

We can continue making excuses for failing our children and continue patching the system to make up for the lack of effective parenting, but personal denial and indifference will only take us so far. Progress is impossible when the art of living: truth, beauty, and goodness in human experience - has reverted to the simple urge of living: the attainment of the satisfaction of present desires.  We stand at a crossroads. Are we willing to intentionally elevate our attitudes and interactions with our family, friends, and colleagues, or is this someone else’s responsibility because we believe we live our lives just fine?  The state of the family unit in our society will faithfully continue to reflect back to us our judgment.

[1] The Barna Group, Marriage and Divorce Statistics (March 31, 2008), Blisstree.com, www.blisstree.com/articles/marriage-divorce-statistics-the-barna-group-232/. 

[2]America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2009; Family Structure and Children’s Living Arrangements, ChildStats.gov, http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/famsoc1.asp. Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Survey, http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/surveys2.asp?popup=true#cps.

[3] “French Out-of-Wedlock Birthrate Shows Impact of Marriage Substitutes,” Christian News Wire, January 23, 2008, http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/673115457.html

[4] “Teen Birth Rates Up Slightly in 2007 for Second Consecutive Year,” Press Release, CDC National Center for Health Statistics, March 18, 2009, http://www.cdc.gov/media/pressrel/2009/r090318.htm. 

About one hundred years before the days of Jesus and John the Baptist, the teaching of Machivental Melchizedek about the coming of a Son of God became associated with the establishment of an earthly kingdom of God. The Hebrew prophets presented this kingdom both as a present reality and later as a future fulfillment that would occur with the appearance of the Messiah and after the destruction of unbelievers. This was the kingdom concept that John the Baptist taught and that Jesus of Nazareth tried to modify in conveying the father-child relationship between God and every individual. To the Jews of Palestine the phrase “kingdom of heaven” had but one meaning: an absolutely righteous state in which God (the Messiah) would rule the nations of earth in perfection of power just as he ruled in heaven.

In the New Testament, the kingdom of God is sometimes referred to as a future event, while at other times as an ongoing one. The confusion about the meaning of the kingdom was compounded when Christianity became a religion centered on Jesus; the gospel of the kingdom became more and more about Jesus than about his unparalleled teachings. The Jewish idea of a future earthly kingdom became supplanted by the Christian concept of Jesus as king upon his return to Earth.

To capture the true essence of Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom, we can seek clarification of the kingdom concept by turning to epochal revelation. Although Jesus appears to be presenting numerous concepts of the “kingdom” in the New Testament, they can be incorporated into the two phases of the kingdom that Jesus portrayed:

1.      The kingdom of God in this world represents the personal realization of the spiritual brotherhood of the sons and daughters of God on Earth; the establishment of the brotherhood of man through every individual’s recognition of God as Universal Father and commitment to doing his will -  growing in Godlikeness.

2.      The kingdom of God in heaven is the vast expanse traversed by the ascending personality on its journey to Paradise. It represents “. . . the goal of believers, the estate wherein the love for God is perfected, and wherein the will of God is done more divinely.”[1] 

The Kingdom of God in This World

To enter the kingdom of God in this world is to believe in God as Father of all, and yourself as a son or daughter of God. Belief in Jesus is not a prerequisite to enter the kingdom. Jesus does not require his disciples to believe in him but rather to believe with him, believe in the reality of the love of God and in full confidence accept the security of the assurance of sonship with the heavenly Father. Jesus desired that all his followers should fully share his transcendent faith; he lovingly challenged his followers, not only to believe what he believed, but also to believe as he believed. This is the full significance of his one supreme requirement, ‘Follow me.”

According to epochal revelation “To Jesus the kingdom was the sum of those individuals who had confessed their faith in the fatherhood of God, thereby declaring their wholehearted dedication to the doing of the will of God, thus becoming members of the spiritual brotherhood of man.”  In an attempt to impart this understanding, Jesus tried to substitute many terms for “the kingdom” that would more accurately portray his message about the relationship between God and mortals. Jesus often spoke of it as the ‘kingdom of life.’ He also frequently referred to “the kingdom of God within you.” Among others, he used: the family of God, the Father’s will, the friends of God, the fellowship of believers, the brotherhood of man, the Father’s fold, the children of God, the fellowship of the faithful, the Father’s service, and the liberated sons of God.” Jesus, however, could not escape the use of the word “kingdom.” Resigning himself to using the term “kingdom of heaven” (which he used interchangeably with the expression “kingdom of God”), Jesus explained to his disciples that the kingdom of God in this world is not an earthly kingdom but an individual’s inner experience centered in the dual concept of the father-child relationship between God and mortals. This dual concept was to set a new standard of moral values and provide the ideal of a new order of human society.

To enter this spiritual kingdom, Jesus taught, there are three essentials: The first is the recognition of the sovereignty/fatherhood of God. The second is the belief in the truth of sonship with God. A third essential is the desire to do the will of God. Once these essentials are in place, to do the will of God requires the development of an unshakable growing attitude of loyalty to God and cultivation of the qualities of divinity to live the golden rule from its highest level of interpretation. “Though Jesus taught that faith, simple childlike belief, is the key to the door of the kingdom, he also taught that, having entered the door, there are the progressive steps of righteousness which every believing child must ascend in order to grow up to the full stature of the robust sons of God.”[2]  Living in the kingdom while on Earth is, therefore, living a life of growing faith, consciously striving toward the highest expression of love, truth, beauty, and goodness.

 This understanding of the kingdom became hazy as the Christian church was organized. Jesus’ ideals of a brotherhood based on the father-child relationship between God and every individual with faith as its only admittance requirement, was replaced with a social fellowship between a group of believers in Jesus - the church. As the early organizers made Christ the head of the church rather than the elder brother of each individual believer in the Father’s family, they struck a deathblow to Jesus’ concept of the divine kingdom in the heart of the individual believer.   Membership in the church must, therefore, not be considered synonymous with fellowship in the kingdom; one is spiritual, the other mostly social.

[2] Ibid. Paper 170:2, p. 1861:9.