The filial devotion and family loyalty exacted by the growing cult of ancestor worship insured the building up of superior family relationships and of enduring family groups. [1]
Human society would be greatly improved if the civilized races would more generally return to the family-council practices of the Andites. They did not maintain the patriarchal or autocratic form of family government. [2] The early family embraced a related working group, including the slaves, all living in one dwelling. [3] The growth of the family idea is incompatible with the roving and unsettled life of the hunter. [4] Loyalty to and watchcare over family is the most sacred human trust. [5]
We are under moral obligation to represent the past generation in the honest transmittal of legitimate wealth to succeeding generations after subtracting a fair toll for the benefit of the present generation. [6]
The amazing stability and persistence of Chinese culture is a consequence of the paramount position accorded the family, for civilization is directly dependent on the effective functioning of the family; and in China the family attained a social importance, even a religious significance, approached by few other peoples. [7] The great threat against family life is the menacing rising tide of self-gratification, the modern pleasure mania. [8]
When all of a family receive the gospel of the kingdom, truly peace abides in that house; but when some of the family enter the kingdom and others reject the gospel, such division can produce only sorrow and sadness. [9]
At Jesus home they used to have periodic family conferences. [10]
As concerns family relationships, Jesus gave precedence to the accepted customs of family life as you find them established in the day and generation of your bestowal. [11]
The Master discoursed at some length on the earthly family as an illustration of the heavenly family, restating the two fundamental laws of living: the first commandment of love for the father, the head of the family, and the second commandment of mutual love among the children, to love your brother as yourself. Jesus stated that a true family is founded on the following seven facts: [12]
He based his teachings about God on the family, while he sought to correct the Jewish tendency to overhonor ancestors. [13]
The family occupied the very center of Jesus’ philosophy of life but made it plain that family relationships must not interfere with religious obligations. [14]
With the passing of the hunter mores, when herding gave man control of the chief food supply, the mother-family came to a speedy end. It failed simply because it could not successfully compete with the newer father-family. [15] The clan peace chiefs usually ruled through the mother line; the tribal war chiefs established the father line. [16]
In earliest times women were the property of the community, and the mother dominated the family. The mother-family was natural and biologic; the father-family is social, economic, and political. [17] The red men clung to the mother-family and nephew inheritance. [18] Chinese tradition preserves the hazy record of the evolutionary past, the transition from mother- to father-family. [19] The oncoming of wife stealing and later wife purchase hastened the passing of the mother-family. [20]
Under the mother-family mores the wife’s mother enjoyed virtually supreme authority in the home; even the wife’s brothers and their sons were more active in family supervision than was the husband. [21]
The clan peace chiefs usually ruled through the mother line; the tribal war chiefs established the father line. [22] The first real governmental body was the council of the elders. This reign of the oligarchy of age gradually grew into the patriarchal idea. [23]
Pastoral living tended to create a new system of mores, the patriarchal type of family life; and the basis of family unity under the herder and early agricultural mores was the unquestioned and arbitrary authority of the father. [24]
Family life cannot be had without children; it can be lived without religion, but such a handicap enormously multiplies the difficulties of this intimate human association. [25] Whenever the mores fluctuate, there is fluctuation in the stability of the family. Now new mores are emerging: [26]
The Edenic ideal, the whole family as gardeners, was a new idea on Urantia. [27]
The advancing ideals of family life are leading to the concept that bringing a child into the world, instead of conferring certain parental rights, entails the supreme responsibility of human existence. [28] A true family—a good family—reveals to the parental procreators the attitude of the Creator to his children. [29]
The family was the first successful peace group, the man and woman learning how to adjust their antagonisms while at the same time teaching the pursuits of peace to their children. [30] Family members reap benefits and suffer consequences of others’ actions. [31] Sex hunger and mother love establish the family. [32]
The family is a temporal institution; that it does not survive death. Jesus did not hesitate to give up his family when the family ran counter to the Father’s will. [33]
The size of the family has always been influenced by the standards of living. The higher the standard the smaller the family, up to the point of established status or gradual extinction. [34] Reasons ancients desired large families: [35]
Almost everything of lasting value has roots in the family. [36] Real families are built upon tolerance, patience, and forgiveness. [37] Earthly family illustrates the heavenly. [38] The most effective of all social groups is the family, more particularly the two parents. The family is the master civilizer. [39]
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. [40]