Episode:Jesus Goes Public—Preparation and Preaching (Part 9)
Jesus did not expect his followers to achieve an impossible manifestation of brotherly love, but he did expect them to so strive to be like God—to be perfect even as the Father in heaven is perfect—that they could begin to look upon man as God looks upon his creatures and therefore could begin to love men as God loves them—to show forth the beginnings of a fatherly affection.
Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Brotherly Love, Fatherly Love, The Beatitudes
Closing thought: Spend as much time as you can reflecting on this distinction between fatherly and brotherly love. Be a part of that re-founding—the new people on Earth.
Note: Justin Armstrong filled in for Brad Garner.
Summary by Kermit
Commentary after Review
A misquote in the summary occasioned a discussion of the important distinction and significance of the terms ideals and values. In denoting the sincerity of a genuine religionist as one who exhibits wholehearted devotion to supreme values of divine ideals, one finds recognition of the transcendent aspect of divine (ideals) brought into relation to the finite (supreme) values.
The failure to distinguish between the existential and the experiential is the point of so much misinterpretation and misunderstanding of fatherly and brotherly love. And lest we sell the apostles (Hebrews) short in their ability to discern existential and experiential distinctions remember Greek philosophic thought, six hundred years prior, would have given them more of a basis for such recognition than we might think.
With all of our referencing of the dangers of secularism, don’t fail to note the difference between things secular and secularism, one being simply pertaining to that which is not religious—time bound—and the other being anti-religious. The abundance of secularistic influence today demands of religionists vigilance in bringing to bear a spiritual, divine, and eternal perspective when choosing goals for living.
We are fond of showcasing the five favorable conditions for being grown by God. They are not presented by the authors in a convenient list, rather are they embedded throughout the revelation. Listen to the archive for a quick exposition by one of our co-hosts of their location in the text inasmuch as they show up here correlated in Jesus’ sermon.
140:5 Fatherly and Brotherly Love
The midwayer authors present a rare extended commentary on the Sermon on the Mount. SoS suggests the depth of their explication of Jesus teaching is due to the fact that the entire discourse was intended solely for the apostles and applying many of these teachings to the multitudes has led and continues to lead to serious misunderstandings and unfortunate consequences over the past two thousand years.
Probably the greatest misunderstanding is to be found in clarifying the existential love of the Father from the experiential love expressed in brotherly love, kindness. Approaching the divine love of the Universal Father by analogy with human parental love leads to false conclusions. Existential love of the Father is a top-down divine love established in the internal desire to do good to others which then becomes manifested outwardly in a cosmic totality attitude through the agencies of Mother Deity.
Jesus is seeking to initiate his apostles in striving to be like God in their appraisal of their fellow men, to love them as God loves them. Concomitant with the effort to love men as God loves them is his admonition to strive to be perfect. The existential nature of the Father’s love poses profound and complex issues when considering the emotional attitudes and environmental adjustments of the experiential domain. Such issues are resolved in the application of existential Father love via the cosmic totality attitude of Mother Deity.
The midwayers lay out for us the two groups of four elements of the beginning of the sermon. The first four consist of four faith attitudes prefatory to four supreme reactions of fatherly love in contrast to mere brotherly love.
The four faith attitudes embraced the poor in spirit, those who hungered after righteousness, the meek, and the pure in heart. In response to such spiritual discernment they would be equipped to attempt a fatherly affection. And so equipped, they could expect even in mourning to manifest mercy, promote peace and endure persecutions, all the while loving even unlovely mankind with a fatherly love, immeasurably transcendent of brotherly affection.
Note: the fuller explication of the SoS unpacking of the midwayer commentary of Jesus’ the sermon would require a summary well beyond the usual and acceptable length of broadcast summaries. Complexities of the involvement of the levels of meaning, and the hourglass analogy of the human mind along with the distinctions between Father and Mother Deity must be listened to in their completeness to approach a deeper apprehension of this most profound material.
Long time followers might recall that SoS studied this material on our January 14, 2014 episode in our series entitled Jesus—Teacher of Living Truth, which was part of our arc on the five epochal revelations. The summary of that broadcast is available on our SoS website and the entire broadcast is archived and available for listening.
