© 1990 Bob Slagle
© 1990 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
by Bob Slagle, Ph.D.
“…[T]He family is the master civilizer.” (UB 82:0.2)
It was a joy to have about seventy people attend our workshop on Family Meetings. A fair number of parents represented families which had attempted family meetings in years past but had faltered for one reason or another, temporarily given them up, then returned to family-council practices with subsequent success. To me this is often the story of family meeting experiments and one strong reason for my claim that family meetings are never a failure, although some families may give them up for a shorter or longer duration. From my experience as a family counselor, even holding just one family meeting is worthwhile and much better than having none at all.
But what do I mean by a “Family Meeting”? Simply getting together to gripe at one another or have Dad or Mom lay down the law like the T.V. Cosbys or Simpsons do is not likely a family meeting in the best sense of the name. Family meetings are appointed gatherings of all family members who live under one roof in order to make decisions by family consensus. Historically, consensus in a town meeting hall meant that everyone gave a unified voice vote of “yea” or “nay” and no written vote or record was counted. In family meetings, consensus means that every person, child or adult, has equal veto power over any decision and that for a decision to count everyone must give their voluntary, uncoerced and informed consent to that decision. Not necessarily an easy process, but amazingly powerful.
There seem to be three essentials to family meetings: consensual agreements, commitment by all parties to abide by those agreements, and keeping a written record of all such family decisions in a family meeting notebook. These essentials have been discovered through trial and error by many families from all parts of the world who have experimented with alternatives, such as majority rule, Father knows best, Mother knows best, children know best, permissiveness, and numerous tactics of avoidance and default of family responsibilities.
Beyond these three essential ingredients families have and should have great latitude in holding family meetings in many different styles, each uniquely suited to the specialness of any given family. Beyond the three essentials — consensus, commitment, and notebook — most of what I have to say consists of suggestions for practical success that I have acquired through working with families as clients over the past twenty years.
The timing, style, traditions, and content of your family meeting is your family’s prerogative and should not be dictated by an outsider (in my opinion). For example, many families like and feel comfortable using the family meeting as the vehicle for awarding money (allowance) for home chores and family-related work. Other families are repelled by the idea of having money or pay as a part of mutual family responsibilities based on love and caring. Some families accept corporeal punishment as an appropriate part of family meeting decisions. Other families hold this to be abuse and use other types of consequences.
The key commitment on the part of parents in holding family meetings is to foster a shift in sovereignty from parental sovereignty to family sovereignty, and to do this in a wise and developmentally appropriate manner. In other words, parents gradually give over their exclusive prerogative to “rule” their children by arbitrary authority to “rule” by the family as a whole. In this process children develop communication skills, teamwork, personal esteem, the ability to compromise, self-confidence, and the true exercise of will (volition). Meanwhile, parents gain a sense of relief from the burdens of arbitrary parenting, freedom to love their children more and reprimand them less. And the family gains a sense of identity, unity, mutual respect, and harmony.
I notice from the life of Jesus that he went far to avoid exercising arbitrary authority. He earned his sovereignty — every bit of it. I cannot help but wonder if families also are not intended to run on the same principles. As I recall, justice is always a group function. On UB 104:2.5 of The Urantia Book, a Melchizedek says, “The Master, when on earth, admonished his followers that justice is never a personal act; it is always a group function. Neither do the Gods, as persons, administer justice. But they perform this very function as a collective whole, as the Paradise Trinity.” Does it not follow that true justice for a child must likewise be a group decision and not the personal act of a parent?
I find a strong mandate in The Urantia Book to encourage families of readers and nonreaders alike to institute the type of family meetings that Jesus held with his brothers and sisters here on earth two thousand years ago.
On UB 84:7.29 the Chief of Seraphim of our planet states in the section on marriage and family life: “Human society would be greatly improved if the civilized races would more generally return to the family-council practices of the Andites.” Who among us wouldn’t like to see society “greatly improved”? This statement is made all the more profound when we realize that the Andites were themselves superhuman, being the progeny of the Adamites and the Nodites. (UB 78:4.2, UB 80:4.3) I also cannot help but notice that the author of this statement is among the highest of the angels, a Primary Supernaphim from Paradise. (UB 37:8.10) And this Primary Supernaphim further qualifies the nature of these family-council practices by saying, “They did not maintain the patriarchal or autocratic form of family government. They were very brotherly and associative, freely and frankly discussing every proposal and regulation of a family nature.”
I would venture to say that woven throughout The Urantia Book are hundreds of clues, hints, and clearly explicit statements to support the idea that family meetings and a shift from parental sovereignty to family sovereignty affords the highest type of family living and family loving possible.
The tremendous importance of family relations is underscored many times in The Urantia Book (e.g., UB 84:0.1, UB 84:8.1). I am particularly impressed with Jesus’ talk with John Mark that Wednesday the lad spent alone with God in the hills of Judea. Jesus makes it clear to me that our early family life affects us greatly, not merely in this life and on the mansion worlds, but forever. “A human being’s entire afterlife is enormously influenced by what happens during the first few years of existence.” (UB 177:2.5) The importance of family life to our world is emphasized in comments made by the midwayers at the end of this section: “It is our sincere belief that the gospel of Jesus’ teaching, founded as it is on the father-child relationship, can hardly enjoy a world-wide acceptance until such a time as the home life of the modern civilized peoples embraces more of love and more of wisdom.” (UB 177:2.6) Personally, I am convinced that family meetings provide a sure way to augment both love and wisdom in the home.
The authors of The Urantia Book refer to Jesus’ type of family-council practices by several terms; on UB 134:9.1 they use the phrase “family meeting,” which I use. In the section entitled “The Nineteenth Year,” I find the most explicit directions regarding the essentials of family meetings. Herein I find that Jesus invariably used the positive method of exhortation, that he refrained from emphasizing evil by forbidding it, that family meeting and prayer time went together, that Jesus used wise discipline early in his siblings’ training, that he never arbitrarily disciplined his brothers or sisters, and that a watchword of their family was “fairness.” (UB 127:4.4) It seems likely that many decisions relating to family matters were made by consensus, and that even punishment was agreed upon by all and awaited the voluntary agreement of even the offending person before being imposed. The story regarding little Jude is most poignant in this regard: “On three occasions when it was deemed wise to punish Jude for self-confessed and deliberage violations of the family rules of conduct, his punishment was fixed by the unanimous decree of the older children and was assented to by Jude himself before it was inflicted.” (UB 127:4.3)
I note a parallel between the consensual nature of Jesus’ family meetings and the technique of adjudication on the highest superuniverse levels. When a creature has made a final and a complete choice of unreality regarding his universe destiny, the Universal Censor does not issue the extinction broadcast until there is consensus among all three of the Ancients of Days. In fact, annihilation must generally await the approval of the sinner himself. (UB 19:4.1, UB 54:3.2, UB 53:9.7) This form of consensual justice is all the more impressive to me when we consider that the Ancients of Days are the most powerful, perfect, divine, and mighty rulers in the time-space creations. (UB 18:3.7) Universal Censors impress me, too. On UB 19:4.5 a Divine Counselor reveals that “…when a [Universal] Censor has spoken, no one else may speak, for the Censor has depicted the true and unmistakable total of all that has gone before. When he speaks, there is no appeal.” Yet, despite all this power and perfection of judgment, our heavenly Father asks that no action be taken until the sinner himself approves of the justness of the verdict. What noble evidence that justice is always a group function! I can even envision Trinity actions as commensurate with family meeting agreements. Indeed a mighty admonition rests overhead if we as human parents seek to rule our children by personal authority in place of family sovereignty.
Another intriguing parallel to the consensual family meeting process is manifested by Michael and his consort, the universe Mother Spirit, in the kind of consensus they reach with each other in ruling a vast universe. “…Both the Son and the Spirit function together, and in no creative act does the one do aught without the counsel and approval of the other.” (UB 33:3.8) As you may recall, at the jubilee of jubilees the Divine Spirit pledges to Michael fidelity and obedience, and he, in turn, acknowledges eternal dependence on her and equality with her as co-ruler of their domains. “And this becomes the transcendent pattern for the family organization and government of even the lowly creatures of the worlds of space. This is, in deed and in truth, the high ideal of the family…” (UB 33:3.6)
So it appears that from the lowest to the highest, from Urantia to Salvington and on to Uversa, the family meeting idea is the fabric of universe governance and justice. No wonder we are encouraged to return to the family-council practices of the Andites. In my book, A Family Meeting Handbook: Achieving Family Harmony Happily, I attempt to integrate the highest concepts from The Urantia Book, as they are found in many present day secular sources, with practical experiences in family living. I beseech parents to unburden themselves of the heaviness of personal authority and release themselves into the joy and light of consensual family meetings — family sovereignty — the Jesusonian approach to family harmony.