ROUGH DRAFT
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Adapted from the Urantia Book original paper here
Thursday Afternoon on the Lake
Jesus knew that his apostles weren’t getting his teachings. So he decided to give some special instruction to Peter, James, and John hoping they’d be able to clarify things for the others. He saw that while some of the ideas of a spiritual kingdom were being grasped by the twelve, they still persisted in attaching these new spiritual teachings directly to their old and entrenched literal concepts of the kingdom of heaven as a restoration of David’s throne and the re-establishment of Israel as a temporal power on earth. So on Thursday afternoon, Jesus went out in a boat with Peter, James, and John to talk about the kingdom of heaven. This was a four-hour conference, and covered scores of questions and answers. The following is a reorganized summary of this momentous afternoon as it was told by Simon Peter to his brother, Andrew, the next morning:
1. Doing the Father’s will. Jesus’ teaching to trust in the care of the heavenly Father was not a blind and passive fatalism. This afternoon he quoted an old Hebrew saying, “He who will not work shall not eat.” He pointed to his own experience to back up his lesson. Jesus’ instructions about trusting the Father must not be judged by the social or economic conditions of modern times or any other age. His instructions embraced the ideal principle of living near God in all ages and on all worlds.
Jesus made clear to the three apostles the difference between the requirements of apostleship and discipleship. He didn’t preach against prudence and forethought, but rather against anxiety and worry. He taught the active and alert submission to God’s will. In answer to many of their questions regarding frugality and thriftiness, he simply called attention to his life as carpenter, boat-maker, and fisherman, and to his careful organization of the twelve. He tried to make it clear that the world isn’t an enemy; that life circumstances are a divine dispensation working along with the children of God.
Jesus had a hard time getting them to understand his personal practice of nonresistance. He absolutely refused to defend himself, and it appeared to the apostles that he’d be pleased if they’d follow the same policy. He taught them to not resist evil, or to combat injustice or injury. But Jesus didn’t teach passive tolerance of wrongdoing. And he made it plain on this afternoon that he approved of the social punishment of evildoers and criminals, and that civil governments must sometimes employ force for the maintenance of social order and the execution of justice.
Jesus never ceased to warn his disciples against the evil practice of retaliation; he made no allowance for revenge, the idea of getting even. He deplored holding grudges. He banned the idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. He disapproved of private and personal revenge, giving these matters over to civil government on the one hand, and to the judgment of God on the other. Jesus made it clear to the three apostles that his teachings applied to the individual, not the state. He summarized his instructions up to that time as:
Love your enemies—remember the moral claims of human brotherhood.
The pointlessness of evil: A wrong is not corrected by vengeance. Don’t make the mistake of fighting evil with its own weapons.
Have faith—confidence in the eventual triumph of divine justice and eternal goodness.
2. Political attitude. Jesus cautioned his apostles to be discreet about what they said concerning the strained relations between the Jewish people and the Roman government; he forbid them from getting caught-up in these difficulties in any way. He was always careful to avoid the political traps of his enemies, always saying, “Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and to God the things which are God’s.” Jesus refused to have his attention diverted from his mission of establishing a new way of salvation; he wouldn’t permit himself to be concerned about anything else. In his personal life he obeyed all civil laws and regulations; in all his public teachings he ignored the civic, social, and economic realms. He told the three apostles that he was concerned only with the principles of man’s inner and personal spiritual life.
In other words, Jesus wasn’t a political reformer. He didn’t come to reorganize the world; even if he had done this, it would have only applied to that day and generation. Regardless, he did show man the best way of living, and no generation is exempt from having to learn how to adapt Jesus’ life to its own problems. But never make the mistake of identifying Jesus’ teachings with any political or economic theory or with any social or industrial system.
3. Social attitude. The Jewish rabbis had long debated the question: Who is my neighbor? Jesus came presenting the idea of active and spontaneous kindness, a love of one’s fellow men so genuine that it expanded the neighborhood to include the whole world, thereby making all men one’s neighbors. But with all this, Jesus was interested only in the individual, not the masses. Jesus wasn’t a sociologist, but he did work to break down all forms of selfish isolation. He taught pure sympathy and pure compassion. Michael of Nebadon is a mercy-dominated Son; compassion is his very nature.
Jesus didn’t say that men should never have their friends over for dinner, but he did say that his followers should help feed the poor and the unfortunate. Jesus had a firm sense of justice, but it was always tempered with mercy. He didn’t teach his apostles that they had to give money to social parasites or professional beggers. The nearest he came to making a sociological pronouncement was to say, “Judge not, so that you won’t be judged.”
Jesus made it clear that indiscriminate kindness can be blamed for many social problems. And the next day Jesus was firm when he told Judas that none of their money was to be given out as alms, except on his request or on the joint petition of two of the apostles. In matters like this, Jesus always said, “Be as wise as serpents but as harmless as doves.” In all situations Jesus taught patience, tolerance, and forgiveness.
The family was at the very center of Jesus’ philosophy of life—here and hereafter. He based his teachings about God on the family, while he sought to correct the Jewish tendency to over honor their ancestors. He placed family life as the highest human duty, but he also made it plain that family must not interfere with religious obligations. Jesus pointed out that the family is a temporal institution; that it doesn’t survive death. Jesus didn’t hesitate to give up his family when it ran counter to the Father’s will. He taught the new and larger brotherhood of man: the sons of God. In Jesus’ time divorce was lax in Palestine and throughout the Roman Empire. And while Jesus repeatedly refused to lay down laws regarding marriage and divorce, many of his early followers had strong opinions on divorce and they didn’t hesitate to say they got them from Jesus. All of the New Testament writers held to these more stringent and advanced ideas about divorce, except John Mark.
4. Economic attitude. Jesus worked, lived, and traded in the world as he found it. He wasn’t an economic reformer, although at times he called attention to the injustice of the unequal distribution of wealth. But he didn’t offer any suggestions on how to fix the situation either. Jesus made it plain to the three that while his apostles weren’t to hold property, he wasn’t preaching against wealth and property, just its unequal and unfair distribution. He recognized the need for social justice and industrial fairness, but he offered no rules for their attainment.
Jesus never taught his followers to avoid earthly possessions: that rule was only for his twelve apostles. Luke, the physician, was a strong believer in social equality and he did much to interpret Jesus’ sayings in harmony with his personal beliefs. But Jesus never personally directed his followers to adopt a communal mode of life, and he made no pronouncement of any sort regarding such matters.
Jesus frequently warned his listeners against envy and wanting what other people might have, saying that “a man’s happiness consists not in the abundance of his material possessions.” He said again and again, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” Jesus made no direct attack on the possession of property, but he did insist that it’s essential for eternal survival that spiritual values come first. In his later teachings Jesus tried to correct many of the wrong ideas of life we have here on Urantia through the many parables he told in the course of his public ministry. Jesus never intended to give us economic theories; he knew that each age has to come up with its own remedies for its own troubles. And if Jesus were on earth today, living his life in the flesh, he would be a great disappointment to the majority of good men and women for the simple reason that he wouldn’t take sides in present-day political, social, or economic disputes. He’d remain grandly aloof while teaching you how to perfect your inner spiritual life so you’re more competent in dealing with your human life.
Jesus would make all men Godlike, and then stand by, with sympathy, while these sons of God solved their own political, social, and economic problems. It wasn’t wealth that Jesus denounced, but rather what wealth does to the majority of the people who want it or have it. It was on this Thursday afternoon that Jesus first told the apostles, “it’s more blessed to give than to receive.”
5. Personal religion. We, like the apostles, can better understand Jesus’ teachings by how he lived his life. Jesus lived a perfect life on Urantia, and his unique teachings can only be understood when that life is looked at from its immediate background. It is his life, and not his lessons to the twelve or his sermons to the multitudes, where we can best see the Father’s divine character and loving personality.
Jesus didn’t attack the teachings of the Hebrew prophets or the Greek moralists. He recognized the many good things for which these great teachers stood, but he’d come down to Earth to teach something additional, “the voluntary conformity of man’s will to God’s will.” Jesus didn’t want to simply make a religious man, a person wholly occupied with religious feelings and actuated only by spiritual impulses. Could you have had but one look at him, you would’ve known that Jesus was a real man of great experience in the things of this world. Jesus’ teachings in this area have been grossly perverted and misrepresented down through the centuries; you also have perverted ideas about the Master’s meekness and humility. What he aimed for in his life appears to have been a superb self-respect. Jesus only advised man to humble himself that he might become truly exalted; what he really aimed at was true humility toward God. He greatly valued sincerity—a pure heart. Fidelity was a cardinal virtue in his estimate of character, while courage was the very core of his teachings. “Fear not” was his watchword, and patient endurance his ideal strength of character. Jesus’ teachings constitute a religion of valor, courage, and heroism. And this is why he chose as his personal representatives twelve commonplace men, the majority of whom were rugged, virile, and manly fishermen.
Jesus said little about the social vices of his day; he seldom referred to moral delinquency. He was a positive teacher of true virtue. He studiously avoided the negative method of teaching; he refused to advertise evil. He wasn’t even a moral reformer. He well knew, and so taught his apostles, that people’s sensual urges aren’t suppressed by either legal or religious laws. His few denunciations were mostly against pride, cruelty, oppression, and hypocrisy.
Jesus wasn’t even passionate denouncing the Pharisees like John did. He knew many of the scribes and Pharisees were honest of heart and he understood their bondage to religious traditions. Jesus laid great emphasis on “first making the tree good.” He impressed on the three that he valued the whole life, not just a certain few special virtues.
The one thing that John gained from this day’s teaching was that the very essence of Jesus’ religion was developing a compassionate character and a personality motivated to doing the will of the Father in heaven.
Peter got the idea that the gospel they were about to proclaim was really a fresh beginning for the whole human race. He later explained this to Paul, who then came up with his idea of Christ as “the second Adam.”
And James, he picked up the exciting truth that Jesus wanted his children on Earth to live as though they were already citizens of the completed heavenly kingdom.
Okay, folks, that’s it for Son of Man: Urantia, Chapter 19, part 4, “The Ordination of the Twelve.”
Chapter 19, part 5, is next.
Have a fantastic week out there, everybody.
Bob