The Fellowship Forum
1993
International Conference
Congres International
THE FAMILIST WAY: AN INTRODUCTION
By Marvin Gawryn
(Please see Appendix A at end of this article before proceeding.)
This is an introduction to the Familist Way. The Familist Way is actually a way of living, moment to moment, in spiritual family relationship, with God as our spiritual parent, and other people as our spiritual sisters and brothers. In this way of living there are seven central truths or qualities of spiritual family life, and these truths are lived out within five circles of family relationship. The seven truths are:
1. The Fatherhood of God. Life in God's family is parental. The parent/child relationship is the central experience.
2. The Brotherhood of Man. This family experience is also profoundly fraternal and sororal.
3. The Indwelling Spirit. Spiritual family life is intimate. It's close and comforting.
4. The Will of God. Sharing our lives with God is directional. It's progressive, it's moving somewhere. Our goal in life is to become more like God. And God is guiding us to reach that goal.
5. Love. Relationships in God's family are always caring and affectionate.
6. Eternal life. We can feel secure because these family relationships will be there for us forever. We are just beginning an enthralling adventure of growth in God's family.
7. Faith. We can trust God utterly. We are fully and perfectly cared for. More and more we can depend on God, follow him, and that changes us.
I use a little memory device to help me remember these truths: "FOG BOM IS WOG L,E,F"--"Fatherhood of God, Brotherhood of Man, Indwelling Spirit, Will of God, Love, Eternal Life, Faith".
The Familist Way involves living out these truths in the context of five family circles, each one of which is an arena of activity and service. There's the 1st Circle, the Inner Family, our Thought Adjusters, Jesus, the Spirit of Truth, our angels; the 2nd Circle, the Home Family, those people that live together and create a home culture; the 3rd Circle, the Fellowship Family, any group of like-minded believers; the 4th Circle, the Interfaith Family, the family of all believers, both inside and outside of organized groups; and the 5th Circle, the Global and even universal family of all God's children, including those who haven't yet discovered him.
We'll be returning in a bit to take a more in-depth look at all this, but at this point I'd like to try to place what I've just shared with you in some kind of context. It was back in 1985, and my wife and I and our kids were living in Boulder, Colorado. I'd been reading The Urantia Book for about 17 years. Like most serious students of the book I'd asked myself the question many times, "What are we supposed to be doing with this revelation?"
I decided to try to search the book itself as thoroughly as I could for the priorities that it articulated. What was The Urantia Book itself telling us to do? And I want to stress here, that the answers I came up with are simply one effort to address that question. Other folks might come up with quite different answers.
I ended up spending a year in full time research in the book. And with the help of some friends, what emerged was a compilation of quotes from The Urantia Book, 370 pages worth, on the general topic of the socialization of religion. After completing this research in the revelation, I felt the need to better understand evolutionary religion and attended seminary for two years at the Graduate Theological Union, studying the history and sociology of religion.
What I want to share with you today is a subset of the quotes and conclusions I drew from this research and education, primarily from sections in the research on cult evolution, central spiritual truths, and religion as a way of living, as well as a smattering from some of the other sections.
What does the book tell us about the socialization of religion? These quotes are on the nature of cultism:
Every inspiring ideal grasps for some perpetuating symbolism--seeks some technique for cultural manifestation which will insure survival and augment realization.... From the dawn of civilization every appealing movement in social or religious advancement has developed a ritual, a symbolic ceremonial. Every effective religion unerringly develops a worthy symbolism... Regardless of the drawbacks and handicaps, every new revelation of truth has given rise to a new cult, and even the restatement of the religion of Jesus must develop a new and appropriate symbolism.... This enhanced symbol must arise out of religious living, spiritual experience. And this higher symbolism of a higher civilization must be predicated on the concept of the Fatherhood of God and be pregnant with the mighty ideal of the brotherhood of man (P. 965-6).
What is this higher symbol the revelators speak of? Once again the book provides us some guidance:
The family occupied the very center of Jesus' philosophy of life--here and hereafter. He based his teachings about God on the family... (P. 1581).Rodan states, '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' (P. 1776).
(Jesus) next explained that the 'kingdom idea' was not the best way to illustrate man's relation to God... Jesus said, 'The people of another age will better understand the gospel of the kingdom when it is presented in terms expressive of the family relationship...' (P. 1603).
Jesus swept away all of the ceremonials of sacrifice and atonement. ... [T]he creature-Creator relationship was placed on a child-parent basis. ...All ceremonials not a legitimate part of such an intimate family relationship are forever abrogated (P. 1133). [Emphasis added.]
So, if we ask, what is this new and higher symbolism that will eventually develop out of the revelation, what is the central metaphor that this new cult might be rooted in? Perhaps it is the family.
No cult can endure and contribute to the progress of social civilization and individual spiritual attainment unless it is based on the biologic, sociologic, and religious significance of the home (P. 966).
There are many other quotes that point to family as a central symbol that emerges from a careful study of Jesus' gospel in The Urantia Book.
I want to move to a related subject. What is it about symbols and cult that make them so important? Modern life is very complex and distracting. The Urantia Book, while it is wonderfully clarifying, is also huge and many-faceted. We need to have a way to highlight and simplify the most essential spiritual truths, to remember them constantly, a way to carry them inside us. We need a way to hook these truths together into a meaningful whole, a symbol that shapes the way we live. And this symbol, this ideal, must motivate us, it must inspire us to want to live out these truths in our daily lives, both as individuals and in our various group relationships.I believe that cult and symbolism help us accomplish these things. They help us to integrate spiritual truth into our lives. But they help us accomplish something else as well. Cult and symbol can equip us, as a group, to become a powerful cultural force that, eventually as we grow large enough, can actually transform human society.
Cult and symbolism can be important tools for us spiritually, as individuals and in groups, and in our efforts to help in the evolution of civilization with this revelation we've been given.
The Familist Way is obviously simply a restatement of Jesus' gospel. It's another of way of pulling together and connecting some of the central truths of the gospel, which are also some of the central truths of The Urantia Book Other people might have other ways of doing it. This is simply one attempt.
First, the Familist Way must be an actual way of living one's life. If it stays simply a set of ideas, then it's dead. It has to be an ongoing experience, a set of unfolding relationships between God and human beings. These truths and circles are simply a series of touchstones that, if we use them, can help us live a more spiritually fruitful life.
Truth cannot be defined with words, only by living (P. 1459).
When theology masters religion, religion dies; it becomes a doctrine instead of a life (P. 1141).
So the elements of the Familist Way are actually simply a series of road signs that point the way along a path. They can help to keep us channeled within an unfolding process... a process of living out our lives as children in God's family.
I'd like to say something about these seven truths. You might ask, "why these particular seven?" Basically it's because they emerged from the research in The Urantia Book. They appeared over and over again, hundreds of times, sprinkled throughout the book. And they were almost always highly emphasized as central to Jesus' gospel. In fact, after a while, it became almost humorous just how often these same seven truths were repeated.
Here are just a few examples:
Fatherhood of God. "And when all is said and done, I can do nothing more than to reiterate that God is your universe Father, and that you are all his planetary children" (P. 72).
Brotherhood of Man. "The acceptance of the doctrine of the fatherhood of God implies that you also freely accept the associated truth of the brotherhood of man" (P. 2053)
Indwelling Spirit. "'The kingdom of God is within you"' was probably the greatest pronouncement Jesus ever made, next to the declaration that his Father is a living and loving spirit" (P. 2084).
Will of God. "Jesus always and consistently interpreted religion wholly in terms of the Father's will" (P. 2088).
Love. "Therefore man's nearest and dearest approach to God is by and through love, for God is love" (P. 50).
Eternal Life. "... Jesus blended man's highest .... spiritual ideals with man's most sublime hope for the future--eternal life. And that was the gospel of the kingdom" (P. 1866).
Faith. "Jesus taught, 'Faith is the open door for entering into the present, perfect, and eternal love of God!"' (P. 1545).Indeed, there were many quotes where four or five of these central truths of the gospel would all be clustered together in a single sentence!
….. a genuine religious experience ... concerns itself only with learning and doing the will of the Father in Paradise. The earmarks of such a religion are: faith in a supreme deity, hope of eternal survival, and love, especially of one's fellows (P. 1141). [Emphasis added.]
.… by faith accept the truth which portrays that the Universal Father so loved the world as to provide for the eternal spiritual progression of its lowly inhabitants... (P. 28). [Emphasis added.]
….The religionist of faith believes in a God who fosters survival, the Father in heaven, the God of love (P. 68). [Emphasis added.]
So it was out of this kind of clustering of these truths and similar repeated support for the importance of the family circles, that this listing emerged.
Appendix B has a lot of small print sections added to it. These sections are small for a reason; specifically to de-emphasize their importance. In the small print I've put down just a little of what each of these truths and circles means for me personally. The empty line at the end of each section means this list is a meager start. Please add lots more of your own experiences and insights under each heading. Each of these truths and circles can be something for you to explore, and discover and grow within in your own life. The Familist Way is basically a framework for spiritual living. The idea is that nothing really essential to the gospel is left out and it all connects to the central symbol of the family.
Please feel free to share any of this with anyone you think might be helped by it.
If you'd like to try working with this framework in your own spiritual life, I would start with first circle Inner Family activity; prayer, worship, communion. Priority number one is to start and maintain a habit of daily prayer and worship time. Even if you spend only 15-20 minutes a day, when you're fresh, I think you'll start to experience some very powerful results.
You can use the elements of the Familist Way as a framework, a kind of inner process template. I've been doing this for a while now and for me it's been a pretty powerful method. Each day I try to spend some inner time working with each of the seven truths, living with them, experiencing them, letting them unfold inside of me. And I pray about the family circles, and how I can live more spiritually within each of them.
I think what you might find is that, as you start to get your Inner Family life going strong, it's pretty natural to begin applying these truths in the other family circles, in your homes with your partners and children, with fellow believers and believers from other traditions, and in your life in general.
You may see it blossoming in your life in different ways: encountering a sister or brother with a problem and feeling the satisfaction of helping them with it; or encountering a difficult choice and asking for a sense of God's will and getting clarity; or maybe there's a pause in the day and you feel the Father's presence inside you, loving you, and you love back; or maybe it's the end of a long day and you're looking up at the stars in the night sky, and you get really excited about the eternal adventure.
Living as a child in God's family can become a very real and ever-present experience for us. And that's really what all this is about.
The Familist Way is a way of living in vital family relationships with God and with other people. The potential of the Familist Way lies in the power it has to unify human experience, if it becomes an actual way of living. There is great life coherence in the integration of family relationships on all conceivable levels; from the inner family to the home family, from the fellowship family to the family of all believers, from the global family of all human beings to the universal family of all beings in the Father's vast creation.
THE FAMILIST WAY - Appendix A
A way of living moment to moment in spiritual family relationship with God as our spiritual parent and other people as our spiritual sisters and brothers.
7 Spiritual Truths (qualities of family relationship)
Fatherhood of God - (Parental) Brotherhood of Man - (Fraternal) Indwelling Spirit - (Intimate) Will of God - (Directional) Love - (Affectionate) Eternal Life - (Secure) Faith - (Trusting)
(FOG BOM IS WOG LE,F)
5 Family Circles (arenas of activity & service) (living out 7 truths within each family circle)
1st Circle: Inner Family 2nd Circle: Home Family 3rd Circle: Fellowship Family 4th Circle: Interfaith Family 5th Circle: Global (Universal) Family of God
THE FAMILIST WAY - Appendix B
A way of living moment to moment in spiritual family relationship with God as our spiritual parent and other people as our spiritual sisters and brothers.
7 Spiritual Truths (qualities of family relationship)
Fatherhood of God - (Parental) -parent/childlike -highest love, worship, adoration -fatherhood/motherhood -nurture, nourishment, sustenance
Brotherhood of Man - (Fraternal) -meaning of siblings -service, exhilaration of really being -joy of getting to know, understand another
Indwelling Spirit - (Intimate) -never alone, constant close companion -mystery -fusion, nucleus of personality
Will of God - (Directional)
-moving somewhere, progressive -guidance, teaching -goal of perfection of God, becoming Godlike -constant growth
Love - (Affectionate) -the divine feeling -always the divine action -love as power/energy -love as true guide to real insight
Eternal Life - (Secure) -embryonic limited nature of this first life -never lose family relationships -never abandoned -stimulus of challenge/adventure never-ending,
Faith - (Trusting) -depending on God, releasing to God -assuming reality is ultimately good for us
-acting on that assumption -faith in God -faith in brothers and sisters -faith in Familist Way of living -dominates the mode of living
(FOG BOM IS WOG LE,F)
5 Family Circles (Arenas of activity & service) (Living out 7 truths within each family circle)
1st Circle: Inner Family -Indwelling Spirit, Spirit of Truth/Jesus, Angels,
Holy Spirit -prayer, worship - 'communion' as communication/union -seven truths as touchstones, working areas -deepening of inner family connections developing actual relationships -help for life challenges, problems, issues
2nd Circle: Home Family -family practices, rituals, prayers, sharing of our spiritual lives -spiritual enculturation of children -including God as a family member
3rd Circle: Fellowship Family -like-minded believers -group prayer, worship, celebrations -sharing of important events (births, deaths, marriages, etc.) -mutual support & friendship (sharing struggles, triumphs) -UB (study groups, societies, conferences) -and other (church, 12 step, etc.)
4th Circle: Interfaith Family -mutual sharing, appreciation with other religionists -learning from others' traditions & methods -supporting & participating in interfaith activities
5th Circle: Global (Universal) Family of God -living 7 truths in work/community settings -evangelism, sharing of spiritual truths with 'orphans' -helping those who don't yet know God to enter 4th circle family of believers -service ministries to sick and unfortunate
--- copyright Marvin Gawryn 1993
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship