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But Jesus also foresaw that there is an accompanying concept urgently requiring comprehension.
The Papers inform us "that of all human knowledge that which is of greatest value is to know the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it." (2090) The key to the value of this statement is because Jesus' life is an authoritative revelation of the true character of God--in so far as that character is comprehensible and attainable by mortal beings such as ourselves.
Provided we have this knowledge, then the requirement that we must seek to become God-like becomes both a realistic and attainable possibility. But all efforts to remake ourselves in the image of God will fail to bear fruit if we believe its expression must be by the public demonstration of our newly found sainthood. Any effect we might have would be short-lived and transient because it would be the result of insincere play-acting, a staged performance that has little to do with our real self.
If we are to bear fruit where the Quakers failed, the demonstration of Jesus-like mode of living must first take place in the environment of those who know us best--our immediate family and our closest friends. Only they will be qualified to distinguish between our real spiritual rebirth and the pretend act that we might put on display in public. And because they will know that something remarkable and real has occurred in our lives, the possibility of it bearing fruit in their own lives will also become more real.
How, when, and where, then, can our efforts to to live as Jesus lived, that is, in obedience to God's will, become really effective? The Papers have some relevant comments:
...family life is man's supreme evolutionary acquirement. (943); Jesus exalted family life as the highest human duty. (1581); The family is the fundamental unit of fraternity in which parents and children learn the lessons of patience, altruism, tolerance, and forbearance which are so essential to the realization of brotherhood among all men. (941); A good family portrays to its children their first disclosure of the love of the Paradise Parent. (942)
That a child will receive its "first disclosure of the love of the Paradise Parent"--that is God-- by observing that same love in the lives of its parents is probably an unthinkable idea for most of us. But reflective thinking indicates that this is what has been missing in most Christian families for almost 2000 years, and is still missing in most Urantian families to this day. Yet it is possibly the most important concept in the whole of the Urantia revelation. For once achieved, it has the potential to be self perpetuating and multiplicative as it is handed down generation by generation.
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