Adapted from the Urantia Book original paper here
Gonod had letters of greetings from the royalty in India to give to Tiberius, the Roman Caesar. On the third day in Rome, Jesus, Gonod, and Ganid met with the emperor and had a long talk. Tiberius was so impressed with Jesus, that after the three of them had left, the Roman Caesar told an aide standing to his right side that he, Tiberius, would be a real emperor if had Jesus’ bearing and gracious manner.
Once in Rome, Gonod started taking Ganid with him so he could learn the family business. And since Gonod had a lot of Indians in Rome working for him who could act as his interpreter, Jesus had a lot of free time to himself. With it, he became well acquainted with this city of two million people.
At this time in history the Roman Empire included Egypt, Syria, northwest Africa, Asia Minor, and southern Europe. This blend of humanity helped Jesus learn much about men during his six months in Rome. But the most valuable experiences were talking with and influencing the religious leaders that were living there. The talks Jesus had with these people helped to pave the way for the later preachers of the new Christian faith.
After seeking out the various religious groups in Rome, Jesus picked five leaders from the Stoics, eleven from the Cynics, and sixteen from the mystery cults with whom to meet. These were personal face-to-face talks with one, two, or three people at a time, and they took up most of Jesus’ spare time while he was in Rome. As Jesus listened to these men and their beliefs in God, he never mentioned any flaws or mistakes in their ideas. Instead, he found the truth in their words, and used that as a starting point to help them to better know God. This way, the truth eventually crowded out the error in their previous beliefs, and it allowed them to quickly accept the coming gospel. This was one of the reasons for the rapid spread of Christianity across the Roman Empire.
Of these thirty-two men, only two were unfruitful in their future lives. All of the rest became central figures in establishing Christianity, and a few of them helped turn the Mithraic temple into Rome’s first Christian church. There were three reasons for the rapid spread of Christianity – Jesus’ talk with Stephen, which led to his murder by the Jews and Saul of Tarsus becoming a believer and then creating the Christian church; the choosing of Simon Peter as an apostle, and Jesus preparing these thirty religious’ leaders for the coming preachers of the new gospel. And again, none of these men ever realized that the man who opened their hearts to God was the one they were to worship as the world’s savior.
In later years, Peter, Paul, and the other Christian teachers in Rome heard tales of this scribe of Damascus who had prepared their way, but they never knew he was Jesus. Paul did figure out that the tentmaker of Antioch and the scribe of Damascus were the same person, but they were all sure, or so they thought, that Jesus had never gone to Rome.
True Values
Angamon was the leader of the Stoics. Early on during Jesus’ time in Rome, he had an all-night talk with Angamon, and Jesus taught him about true values. This man later became a good friend of Paul.
Jesus explained that the standard for true values must be taken from the spiritual world: from the divine level of eternal reality. On Earth, all values are partial, inferior, and impermanent. The scientist is limited to how material facts relate to one another. A true scientist must stay true to the scientific method, and cannot claim to be either an idealist or a materialist, since both of those attitudes are beliefs representing the essence of philosophy.
The unlimited advancement of a materialistic culture that isn’t balanced with moral insight and the spiritual advancement of humanity, can become a menace to civilization. Pure materialism holds the potential seed of its own destruction.
The extremes of idealism and materialism will always be in conflict. But that isn’t the case for those idealists and scientists who possess a common standard of moral values. These people must, in service of humanity, put aside their bickering and work to continually bring forth a more true and worthy science, and religion, in devotion to human progress.
Good and Evil
The leader of the Cynics in Rome was Mardus, and he and Jesus became great friends. Mardus had a lot of questions about good and evil. Jesus told him that good and evil are just words that show our ability to understand the universe. He said there are social standards of good and evil, but that those are for the ethically lazy. Then there are religious standards of good and evil as shown in a faith’s practices, but they are morally unprogressive and bound to tradition. Jesus then told Mardus that the standard for the eternal soul that will reside with God, is to follow that divine spirit of God that is in fact in our mind and hearts. In other words, us being open to, and following, the guidance of the spirit of our Father inside of us when we choose between good and evil is the key to our personality’s survival.
Goodness, like truth, is relative and contrasted against that that is not perfect, evil. Being able to perceive these qualities of truth and goodness is how we make the decisions essential to our eternal survival. Blindly following scientific facts, social etiquette, or religious dogma places us in danger of losing our moral and spiritual freedom; we become intellectual parrots, social automatons, and slaves to religious authority.
Goodness, for mortals, is more of a desire than it is an achievement. Goodness is the progressive and ever-expanding experience of reaching higher and higher levels of spiritual personality as we follow our desire to be one with God. A good experience increases our sense of beauty, strengthens our will, sharpens our perception of truth, and enhances our ability to love and serve our fellow human beings. Our ability to discern truth and goodness is directly related to our personal progress. Error and evil remain part of our experience until we finally blend with our Thought Adjuster and become one with God. Our ability to know what is true or good, and then choose between the two, is proof of man’s morality. And while we don’t have to actually experience evil in our journey to God, we do have to experience the possibility of choosing evil to strengthen our moral will and faith in God.
Truth and Faith
The leader of the mystery cults in Rome was a Greek Jew named Nabon, and he and Jesus talked to great lengths on many subjects. Nabon was impressed with Jesus’ explanation of truth and faith one night. Jesus explained that truth extends the knowledge we gain from observing the material world by melding it with our experience of continually reaching higher levels of spiritual reality. Knowledge is the facts of science; truth is the religious experience of spiritual living.
At their highest levels, truth and knowledge unite and are one. Until then, there may be conflict between knowledge and our human fears, beliefs, and prejudices. Knowing truth requires faith, which is our hope in reaching the next level of wisdom higher than we now have. Faith is what allows our Thought Adjuster, which is eternal, to identify with our mortal personality. This has to happen so that when we die on Earth our Thought Adjuster can carry us, the essence of our human personality, into our next level of universe existence. The next life we have after death is our first life in a long succession of lives where our personality will manifest in bodies that are of a finer spiritual nature until we reach ultimate perfection and join in oneness with God. This is our reason for existence, and once we start, we can’t stop short of reaching our destiny of eternal life.
Personal Ministry
Jesus met with and spoke to almost five hundred people during his six months in Rome. The only places he refused to go were the public bath houses, and this was because of the casual sex that happened there. Jesus considered the time he spent in Rome to be one of his greatest experiences on Earth. And always, in his talks with people he would assure them of the love and mercy of God, that they were God’s children, and that this bond was personal because God was actually in their hearts and minds.
Jesus was a listener. He would start a conversation by asking questions, and listen as people told him their problems. Almost always, the talk would end with the people in turn asking Jesus questions, and then with Jesus doing some small thing for the person before they parted ways, which was something that he took great pleasure in doing.
Jesus’s talks with these people often had long-lasting effects. After a discussion with a Roman senator, the man tried for the rest of his life to change the Roman system of government from one where the government supported and fed the people, to a system where the people supported the government.
After teaching a slave holder named Claudius that men were the sons of God, the next day this man freed one hundred seventeen of his slaves. In another talk, Jesus helped a Greek physician understand that men had minds and souls that needed healing as well as bodies, and this exchange with Jesus led the doctor to search for even greater ways to be of service to people.
When speaking to a Roman soldier as they walked along the Tiber river, Jesus told the man to be brave of heart, but to also be brave enough to be just and show mercy. Jesus told the soldier to obey his highest understanding of truth and goodness just as he obeyed his commander, and to love people and seek God his Father in heaven with a whole heart.
When Jesus met a poor man who had been falsely found guilty of a crime, he went with him to speak to the judge. Jesus told the judge that the greater the nation was, the more it made sure that injustice never happened to even it’s poorest citizen. He said that there was shame on any country where only those with money could get justice. Jesus said that a country’s survival depended on the fairness of its courts, and that it was a sacred duty to let innocent people go and to punish the ones who were guilty. Where religion is based on mercy, government is based on justice. After hearing Jesus speak, the judge reopened the case, reviewed the evidence, and found the poor man innocent.
Counseling the Rich Man
There was a rich man, a Roman Stoic, who wanted to know what Jesus would do with his money if he was wealthy. Jesus told him that just like he gives knowledge, wisdom, and divine service to people to enrich their mental, social, and spiritual lives, he would, in a wise manner, administer his wealth to better people’s material lives in this and future generations.
But the rich man wasn’t satisfied with that, and he wanted a more specific answer. So he asked Jesus what he, the rich man, should do with his wealth. Should he keep it, or should he give it away? Jesus could tell that this man was sincere, and that he really wanted to know how he could best serve humanity for the sake of God. So Jesus agreed to answer his question, but before doing so he said that he was only going to answer the man because he had asked for Jesus’ advice. Jesus went on to tell this rich man that the advice he was going to give to him about money was only for him, the rich man, and to not force what Jesus told him onto anyone else.
Jesus told this wealthy man that there were ten different ways that a person could become rich, and that a man had to look at his wealth and be honest when he decided from where his money had come.
The ten ways to become rich where first, inherited wealth: that money that gets handed down from our parents. Second, discovered wealth: that money we make off of the Earth’s resources. Third, trade wealth, or money we make off of honest business deals. Fourth, unfair wealth, money made from cheating and enslaving others. Fifth, interest wealth, the money we make from investing our capital. Sixth, genus wealth, which is the money we make from our creative efforts. Seventh, accidental wealth, which is money that just happens to come to us by luck. Eighth, stolen wealth, or getting rich by stealing and dishonesty. Ninth is wealth from trust funds, or money given to us to use for a specific purpose, and finally, the tenth is earned wealth, the fair return we get for our daily efforts.
Jesus told the rich man that once he had divided his wealth into these categories, that he should then be fair in figuring out how to spend that portion of his money. And if he was ever unsure who he should help, that he should favor those people in need who were suffering pain in their lives.
The rich man still wasn’t satisfied with Jesus’ answer, and he wanted to know more. Again, Jesus said okay, and again Jesus insisted that the man only use his advice for managing his own money. Again, Jesus told the man that he was not to take his suggestions and use them to dictate over other rich men, or tell other people how they should use their own money. Jesus then went on to expand more on the his ten points about money and wealth.
1. If you become a steward of inherited wealth, be sure where it came from. If it came from honest sources, then you have both the right to take some of the money for your own use, and an obligation to guard some of the money for your children. If the money you inherited came from unfair or dishonest means, you are not bound to continue earning money that way. If you do end up with money earned from fraud or illegal acts, you are free to give it away based on your ideas of justice, generosity, and restitution. Be wise and use sound judgement when leaving your wealth to your children.
2. Discovered wealth from the Earth’s resources should be shared in ways to help the greatest number of people. The Earth is here forever, and it’s for all people now and in the future. Each of us, though, is only here for one short life. It’s right to reward a person for their efforts in taking wealth from the Earth, but at the same time it would be selfish for the person to claim the right to all of the wealth he gains from resources hoarded by the Earth for everyone’s use.
3. Wealth earned by trade or through barter is fair and legitimate profit, and you have a lot of say in how to use it. There are many ways of making money by trade and barter, and with each one you should first judge the honesty and fairness it holds, and then proceed from there.
4. Wealth earned through the enslavement, unfair exploitation, or sweat of oppressed people is a moral curse and spiritual stigma. Money earned this way should be returned to those who were robbed, or to their children or their children’s children.
5. Fair interest on wealth that was earned correctly is legitimate. But first make sure that your wealth is clean before laying claim to the interest. Never use your money to take advantage of others in distress, or to charge more interest than is correct on the money you lend to those in need.
6. Wealth gained from bursts of genius and creativity is both due to the person, and to the society in which they live. No person is an isolated entity. All people achieve what they accomplish today because of the efforts of the other people on Earth now, and the efforts of the people who came before them. Each of these cases is different, and each should be handled according to the person’s highest understanding of fairness. Always remember, if you know others as your brothers then your desire should be to do for them as you would want them to do for you.
7. Accidental wealth shouldn’t be hoarded by the person lucky enough to receive it. These riches should be viewed as a trust to be used for the benefit of one’s community. The person receiving the wealth has the right to be paid for his administration of the wealth and should have the first say in how it is used, but he should not look upon it as his personal money.
8. Illegal wealth must be returned to its rightful owners. Make full amends, and make sure your wealth contains no money gotten from unfair or dishonest acts.
9. Wealth you have that has been given to you in trust for the benefit of others carries a sacred and solemn responsibility. Take only that amount from the trust for yourself that other honest men would consider fair.
10. Wealth earned from your own work, if fair and legal, is fully your own money. You have the right to use it as you see fit, provided that doing so doesn’t harm others.
Social Ministry
One day when Jesus and Ganid were going to the library, they came across a little boy who had wandered away from home and who was crying in distress because he couldn’t find his mother. His house wasn’t far away, and they took the lad home to his mommy, who was of course very grateful to them. Afterwards, Jesus told Ganid that most people were like that little boy. In other words, they spend most of their time crying in fear and wallowing in sorrow when in reality they are only a short way from safety and security, just like the little boy was just a short way from his mom. And those of us who do know our way to the saving light of God, should look at it as a privilege, not a duty, to lead those lost people to the comfort of God their Father in heaven. That is our greatest joy. From that day on, Ganid committed himself to always being on the lookout for lost children that he could lead home to their Father.
Jesus and Ganid met a widow with five kids whose husband had been killed in an accident at work, just like had happened to Joseph, Jesus’s father, years before. The two of them made many visits to comfort this woman, and Ganid got money from his father to support her until they found a job for her oldest son so he could care for the family.
Trips About Rome
Jesus, Gonod, and Ganid took five trips to places outside of Rome itself. On one of these trips to some lakes in northern Italy, Jesus and Ganid talked about why it was impossible to teach a man about God if he doesn’t want to know God. They had this talk because on the way up the mountain trail they had met a pagan, and Ganid wanted to know why Jesus didn’t stop and talk to him about God like he did with everyone else.
Jesus told Ganid that the man wasn’t ready for the truth, or to ask for help. The man was satisfied with who he was, and he wasn’t yet ripe enough to hear the message of God. First, the man needed more time to meet the trials of life that prepare us to receive higher learnings. Or, he could live with us and maybe though our lives we could show him the Father in heaven and arouse his desire to know him more.
But you can’t show someone God who isn’t looking for him. You can’t lead a person to salvation if they don’t want to go. People become hungry for truth either by going through the problems in life, or by being around people who already know our Father. In other words, we who know God have the duty to let God reveal himself to others through how we live our lives so it encourages them to ask for help in finding him.
When the three of them were up in the mountains of Switzerland, they had an all-day talk about Buddhism. Gonod started this discussion off with a direct question to Jesus, asking him what he thought about Buddha. Jesus told them that Buddha was much better than what became of Buddhism. Jesus said Buddha was a great man, even a prophet to his people, but he was an orphan prophet who lost sight of his Father in heaven, which made his story tragic.
Jesus said that Buddha wanted to live and teach like a messenger of God, but without God. He sailed all the way to the entrance of mortal salvation, and then ran his boat aground because he didn’t know the way forward without God. And there his ship has remained stranded and filled with many generations of people refusing to enter the kingdom of God, because they had followed Buddha’s philosophic teachings instead of remaining true to his noble spirit.
Jesus went on to explain that Buddha knew God in spirit, but not in mind. The Jews, on the other hand, had found God in mind but failed to know him in spirit. So now Buddhists flounder about in confusion because they have a philosophy but no God, while other faiths are enslaved to the fear of God because they don’t have a philosophy of life and liberty. By failing to give his people the vision of God as a spirit and a Father, his teachings lacked the moral energy needed to change people and nations.
At that point, Ganid told Jesus that the two of them should make a new religion. One good enough for India, and big enough for Rome. But Jesus said no, that religions aren’t made. He said that the religions of men come about over long periods of time, but that revelations of God flash forth in the lives of the men who show God to others. Jesus’ words were prophetic. He was describing his future, but Gonod and Ganid didn’t understand what he meant.
Ganid believed that Jesus was a prophet, and for the rest of his life he continued to create a religion of his own. But little did Ganid know that the whole universe watched as he had suggested to the creator of his universe that they should build a new religion. Nor did this young man realize that they were in fact, right then and there, making a new and everlasting religion: the new way to salvation by revealing God to man in and through in Jesus. And this is how it was then, and how it is now. Whenever a person is in partnership with God, great things will happen in accordance with the person’s dedication to doing the divine will of God in heaven.
Okay, folks, that’s it for Son of Man: Urantia, Chapter 11, “While in Rome.”
Next week’s Son of Man: Urantia, Chapter 12, is titled, “The Return from Rome.”
Have a fantastic week out there.
Bob