Signs of the Times

Walter M. Burkholder

United Brethren

The Reverend Walter M. Burkholder in the United Brethren magazine Huntington, Indiana

A person-centered home, whether the wife be the central figure, or the husband, or the child, does not produce a growing love and happiness for each member of the family. Even the central figure becomes bored, increasingly demanding and progressively more difficult to satisfy. The person, thus indulged, literally becomes the god before whom all else must stand in reverence....

Undisciplined children, overindulged in the things that are material, rather than instructed in the highest spiritual motivations and values of life, are a major problem to the educator, law enforcement officers, others who have to live near them and almost everyone who has to contact them ....

Children thus brought up ... have not learned that happiness comes through "giving" rather than "getting." These same people are the problems in industry and business, for they live by the philosophy that "The world owes me anything I want, so it is up to me to take it."

Mutual sharing of responsibility, work and joys, the good and the undesirable, is the foundation for growing love and happiness. In the home there should be time for the family to do things together other than merely sitting and watching TV .... Singing together is healthy exercise physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

Family worship has long been excused from home life on the basis there is no time for it. How is a child to develop a Well-balanced personality if all the attention is given to the physical, mental and social aspects of his personality, but he is spiritually impoverished? If one's heart and mind are filled with nonspiritual things, how is he to give expression to the spiritual nature that must find an expression in life? ...

"Things" do not bring happiness. Happiness is a condition of the heart that is the result of being at peace with God and man. Jesus said. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness: and all these things shall be added unto you."

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April 18, 1964

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