How we can heal our world and our selves.
by George Pelly-Bosela
of the Church of Human Weakness
Life is not easy. A person can do most things the right way, but still be brought to ruin by a comparatively small number of mistakes. This happens to all of us at times. I see this a lot, and I feel great sympathy for anyone to whom this happens. And I feel great regret when I realize that all of the mistakes that people make, could be avoided by following the commands of Jesus Christ. And when I see how few of us, try to follow most of Jesus’ commands: including only a tiny percentage of those of us, who call ourselves Christians.
The claim that we could avoid all of the mistakes that we make, by following Jesus’ commands, probably sounds like an inflated claim to most of you. This is natural because we all often hear inflated and false claims. It is important to remember, though, that disbelieving true claims, can hurt us just as much as believing false claims, can hurt us. It is very dangerous both to believe too quickly, and to disbelieve too quickly. Our wisest course of action, is to try to learn more about any claim, before we either believe that claim or disbelieve that claim.
One reason it is hard for us to believe that following Jesus, will allow us to avoid all of the mistakes that we make, is that we do not realize that the things Jesus tells us to do, will help us much more through changes they will lead to within us, than through changes they will lead to outside of us. We often expect all of the rewards that come from following Jesus, to be external rewards, and we do not see that most of the rewards that come from following Jesus, are internal rewards. For example following Jesus’ command not to judge, (Mt 7:1-2, & Lk 6:37), will allow us to use our minds much more effectively than we would be able to use our minds if we did judge. Part of the reason for this, is that when we judge, we destroy our ability to think clearly, by destroying our ability to see our world as it is. We do this by choosing to see our world in a way that will allow us to judge ourselves and people we like, more favorably than reality would allow. We usually do this by seeing what we want to see and disregarding the rest. (because engaging in selective perception is a less obvious error than outright hallucination. Though for this reason it is also a more dangerous error). And a part of the reason that we will be able to use our minds more effectively if we follow Jesus’ command not to judge, is that when we judge, we spend great amounts of mental energy on judging, and we would be able to use our minds much more effectively, if we devoted this mental energy to activities that helped us. And one way in which Jesus’ command, “Do not resist evil”, (Mt 5:38-41), will help us, is by freeing up the great amounts of mental energy that we devote to preparing to fight. If we instead devote this mental energy to trying to figure out how to avoid evil and reduce evil, without resisting evil, then we will always be able to discover alternatives to resisting evil, that will hurt us and people who our actions affect, less than resisting evil, would hurt us and people who our actions affect, and that will help us and people who our actions affect, more. Resisting evil, seldom works as a way of reducing or avoiding evil. Much more often, resisting evil, leads to escalating violence, as it turns fights into battles and battles into wars. To try to be prepared to fight effectively at a moment’s notice, we oversimplify our world into a picture in black and white with no shades of gray, because we fear that if we saw the true complexity of our world, then we might feel indecision when we want to fight, and that this indecision might make us hesitate when we want to act quickly. If we have pledged that we will not resist evil, though, then we will not mentally handicap ourselves by trying to be prepared to fight effectively at a moments notice. Being able to see our world as it truly is, will also be one of the greatest rewards that will come to people who follow Jesus’ commands to forgive people who trespass against us (Mt 6:13-15, Lk 17:3-4,&LK 6:37), and to love our enemies (Mt 5:42-48), because if we do not follow these commands, then the hate in our hearts will cloud our vision. The most valuable thing we own is our selves. And Jesus’ commands are an owner’s manual that we have been given, that tells us how we must act in order to function best.
It is also hard for us to believe that following Jesus, will allow us to avoid all of the mistakes that we make, because we do not realize how different our actions would be, if we tried to follow Jesus. We all have a watered-down idea of what it means to follow Jesus, because most of the people who we see, who say they are trying to follow Jesus, do not try to do most of what Jesus tells us to do. To understand what it means to follow Jesus, we must study what Jesus tells us to do. Not what people who call themselves Christians, do.
We can see how different Jesus’ teachings are from traditional morality, when Jesus says, “You have heard it said in the past that you should not swear unless what you swear to is true. But I say to you, ‘Do not swear at all’” (Mt 5:33-37). In traditional morality, there is nothing wrong with swearing oaths that are true. But Jesus is teaching us a different morality. Jesus tells us that the reason we should not swear at all, is because swearing denies the fact that we have too little power to guarantee anything, when He says, “Do not swear at all, not even on your own head, because you cannot make one hair white or black.” We also see the difference between traditional morality and the morality that Jesus teaches us, in Jesus’ command not to resist evil. (Mt 5:38-48) Fighting, (at least against people who try to do great harm to us), is so central to everything we see other people do, and to everything we do, that without Jesus’ teaching we would not even imagine that not resisting evil, is a possible goal that people could aspire to. Resisting evil would seem to be as much a part of being human as breathing, eating, or drinking. Without Jesus’ teachings most of us would also never consider trying to give to every one who asks of us, and asking for nothing in return, (Lk 6:30 (27-36), see also Mt 5:42- 48), and most of us would never consider trying to do good to those who persecute us, (Mt 5:42- 48), or trying to forgive people who trespass against us, (Mt 6:9-15, see also Lk 6:37). Most of us spend most of our time and energy trying to gain wealth and power, but Jesus teaches us that these things will hurt us more than they will help us, when He says, “It will be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Lk 18:18-25, see also Mt 19:16-24, Lk 12:33, & Mk 10:17-25), and when He says, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall ? inherit the earth.”, (Mt 05:05-06). Nearly every thing Jesus tells us to do is something we would not consider doing without Jesus’ teachings.
What makes Jesus’ teachings uniquely valuable to us, is the fact that Jesus tells us to do many things that no other teacher tells us to do. Other teachers tell us that ‘Giving to all who ask of us and asking for nothing in return’, (Lk 6:30 (27-36), see also Mt 5:42- 48), and ‘Taking no thought for our lives’, (Mt 6:25-34 & Lk 12:22-32), will lead us to take reckless actions that will only hurt us. Jesus knows, though, that following these commands is the only way to create the kind of world that we all want to live in. Some teachers other than Jesus, tell us to do some of the things that Jesus tells us to do. But no other teacher tells us to do everything that Jesus tells us to do. If any other teacher did tell us to do everything that Jesus tells us to do, then we would help ourselves just as much by following that teacher, as we will help ourselves by following Jesus. Jesus, Himself, tells us that his teachings are the most important thing about Him, when He says, “Blasphemy against the Son Of Man will be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” (Mt 12:32 & Lk 12:10). The Son of Man is Jesus’ name, and the Holy Spirit is Jesus’ teachings and the help that Our Creator gives to people who try to follow those teachings. Jesus is telling us that Our Creator will forgive blasphemy against the name of Jesus, but will not forgive blasphemy against the teachings of Jesus.
Jesus’ commands “Do not resist evil.” (Mt 5:38-41), and “Give to every one who asks of you, and do not ask for anything back from one who takes from you.” (Lk 6:30 (27-36), see also Mt 5:42- 48), are also examples of how much we would help ourselves, if we did try to live as Jesus tells us to live. For as long as any of us can remember, we have been bemoaning the suffering of war. Two examples of this that I have seen, are Mark Twain’s story, “The War Prayer”, and the popular novel, movie, and television series “M.A.S.H.”. We seem to have seen how serious this problem is. Why then, have we not come close to solving it? Can we really do no better than we have done? We could do much better, if we would follow Jesus’ commands not to engage in violence. If enough of us, did this, then we would end the suffering of war, by ending war. Jesus says to us, “You have heard it said: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you: Do not resist evil: If a man strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him your left. If a man judges you and takes away your coat, offer him your cloak also. If a man compels you to go a mile, go with him two.” (Mt 5:38-41) For almost all of human history, we have told ourselves that if we did not resist evil, then we and people who our actions affect, would suffer greater grief and privation than we and people who our actions affect, would suffer if we did resist evil. Jesus knows that the opposite of this is true. This is why He gives us this command. And Jesus tells us to speak out against evil without resisting that evil, when He says to us, “If your brother trespasses against you, first tell him his fault in private. If he will not hear you, then go to him again and bring some witnesses with you. If he still will not hear you, then tell it to the church. If he will not hear the church, then let him be as a stranger to you.” (Mt 18:15-17, see also Lk: 29). Letting our brother be as a stranger to us, is a last resort, which we should only turn to after speaking out against evil in many ways. But it is far better than resisting evil, as we will all be tempted to do. Following Jesus’ command, “Give to every one who asks of you, and do not ask for anything back from one who takes from you.” (Lk 6:30 (27-36), see also Mt 5:42- 48), will also help us avoid war, because every war occurs because some people want something that other people posses, and because those people do not want to share that thing. Any other reasons that people say they fight wars, are just lies that people tell themselves.
If Jesus had meant His commands not to apply to people who are serving governments, then He would have said this. Jesus never did though. And all attempts to claim that Jesus’ commands do not apply to people who are serving governments, are just excuses that we use when we want to disobey Jesus. paul did not try to make this claim in his letter to the romans, which is often quoted as an attempt to do this. (Romans 13:1). In this part of this letter, paul was trying to persuade the people to whom he wrote, not to resist government-sponsored violence. paul was not telling these people that if governments told them to resist evil, they should obey those governments. The people who paul wrote to, knew that all governments of their time, hated them, and probably could not imagine any government asking them to serve it. So paul did not address this contingency. In this passage, paul said that if a government holds power, then God has ordained that, that government will hold power. This would mean that God has sometimes ordained that violent governments will hold power. paul never said that people who follow Jesus could serve these governments or be a part of these governments. Jesus’ commands make it clear that if we hope to follow Jesus, we cannot do these things. God may ordain that violent governments will sometimes hold power. But God does not force any person to be a part of these governments. Any person who chooses to be a part of governments that resist evil, will be choosing to disobey Jesus, and will be punished for doing this. Jesus tells us that many people who have temporary advantages, will suffer later, when He says, “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your comfort. Woe to you who have been filled, for you will hunger. Woe to you who laugh now, because you will mourn and lament. Woe to you when all men shall speak well of you, for your fathers spoke well of the false prophets. (Lk 6:20-26).
Any person who joins a military force or a police force, or who takes a job working for a court system or a penal system, is not even trying to follow Jesus’ command not to resist evil. If we try to follow Jesus, we may all sometimes fail. So far every person who has tried to follow Jesus, has sometimes failed. Each of us, has our breaking point. But we must try as hard as we can, to follow Jesus, if we hope to receive rewards that Jesus tells us of, or to avoid punishments that Jesus tells us of. Jesus says to us, “If you forgive men their trespasses, then Your Heavenly Father will forgive you” (Mt 6:13-15, & Mk 11:25-26), “Forgive and you will be forgiven” (LK 6:37). Forgiving people who trespass against us, is not something we can do instead of trying to follow Jesus’ other commands. If we are trying to forgive people who have trespassed against us, then we will try to do every thing that Jesus tells us to do. Every Command that Jesus gives us, is a part of forgiving people who have trespassed against us.
Following Jesus, is a matter of being able to do what Jesus tells us to do. Jesus says to us, “Whoever has been given much, much will be demanded of that person.” (Lk 12:48). To be able to follow Jesus, we must have been given the wisdom necessary to understand that following Jesus will always help us more than it will hurt us, and the strength necessary to live as Jesus tells us to live, and the good fortune to be led away from temptation that would be too great for us to resist. These are the things that Our Creator gives to people from whom He demands much. This is why Jesus says to His followers, “You have not chosen me, I have chosen you.” (Jn 15:16). Jesus chooses His followers by giving some people the wisdom, strength, and good fortune needed to follow Him. Jesus does not choose his followers by rejecting some people who want to follow Him. Jesus welcomes all people who want to follow Him. People who have not been given these things, will not want to follow Jesus, though. This is also why Jesus says, “Whoever has, more will be given to him; and whoever has not, even what he seems to have, will be taken away from him.” (Lk 8:18, Lk 19:26, Mt 13:12,Mt 25:29, & Mk 4:25): Because whoever has these things, will follow Jesus, and will be rewarded for doing this. And this is also why Jesus tells us to pray to Our Heavenly Father, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (Mt 6:5-15 & Lk 11:2-4). Jesus is telling us to pray that we be delivered from the evil we would do if we were led into temptation. It is this evil we truly need to be delivered from. Evil that is done to us does us little harm, compared to evil that we do.
Maybe Our Creator has not expected most of the people who have called themselves Christians, to be able to follow Jesus. Because less was given to these people, maybe less was demanded of them. People who have called themselves Christians, have preserved Jesus’ words. (Without these people, those of us alive today, would not be able to read or hear what Jesus said). And maybe this is as much as Our Creator expected from these people. We who are alive today, are the people to whom much has been given. We have been given innumerable advantages that make it much easier for us to live as Jesus teaches, than it was for people in the past, to live as Jesus teaches. And for this reason much more is demanded of us, than was demanded of people in the past. Jesus’ words have been like a dormant seed that has been preserved until conditions are ripe for it to grow into a community of people who try as hard as they can, to live by those words.
To be able to have any hope of doing what Jesus tells us to do, we must start by closely studying what Jesus says, and we must realize that any area in which Jesus did not tell us what to do, when He preached on earth, is an area in which Jesus and Our Creator do not care what we do. This has not stopped many people who call themselves Christians, from trying to put words into Jesus’ mouth, in these areas. This probably happens most with regard to homosexuality. Jesus never told us to avoid homosexuality. If He and our Creator cared about people being homosexual, then Jesus certainly would have told us either to be homosexual, or not to be homosexual, when He preached on earth. The most common way in which people try to put words into Jesus’ mouth, is by pretending that Jesus agrees with everything that is said in the Old Testament. Jesus, though, specifically tells us to avoid many actions that people in the Old Testament performed. This is easiest to see in the area of violence. People in the Old Testament, often take part in warring and violence, but Jesus tells us not to resist evil (Mt 5:38-41). The reason that many people think that Jesus agrees with everything in the Old Testament, is that they misunderstand Jesus’ statement, “Do not think that I came to destroy the law of the prophets, I came not to destroy but to fulfill.” (Mt 5:17). These people confuse the ‘Law of the Prophets’ with the ‘Old Testament’. While the law of the prophets is part of the Old Testament, there is much in the Old Testament that is not part of the law of the prophets. Only parts of the Old Testament that reinforce what Jesus teaches, are part of the law of the prophets.
The commands that Jesus gives us, tell us how we should treat all people, whether or not those people follow Jesus. Jesus never tells us to treat people who follow Him any differently from people who do not follow Him. Even though doing this is one of the greatest mistakes that people who call themselves Christians, have made.
Our Creator has sent many teachers to earth to help us learn important lessons. And we should praise all of these teachers. But Our Creator has only sent one teacher for us to always follow. We can tell who this teacher is, by noticing that there is only one teacher whose teachings will heal the wounds that are tearing our world apart, if a significant number of people in our world, try as hard as they can to follow those teachings. Many teachers other than Jesus, teach some of the same lessons that Jesus teaches. And many people will learn how to do more of what Jesus’ teaches, from other teachers, than do many people who belong to churches that call themselves Christian churches, and these people will receive greater rewards and fewer punishments from Our Creator, than anyone who does less of what Jesus tells us to do. Even though that person may call Jesus, Lord.
Jesus tells us that we will only receive rewards from Our Creator, and avoid punishments from Our Creator, if we live as He tells us to live, and that if we do not live as Jesus tells us to live, then calling Him Lord, will not help us, when He says, “Not all who say, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father. On the day of judgement, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name?, and in your name cast out demons?, and in your name done many wonderful works? And I will say to them, “I never knew you. Leave me, you workers of iniquity.” (Mt 7:21-23: see also Lk 6:46). And Jesus tells us that if we do live as He tells us to live, then we will be as close to Him as His closest family members, when, “as He stood at a podium before a large crowd, Jesus was told that His mother and brothers were outside the building He was speaking in, and wished to see Him. Jesus then asked the person who had told Him this, ‘Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?’, then Jesus stretched forth his hand to his disciples and said, ‘Behold my mother and my brothers. Whoever shall do the will of My Father in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother’”. (Mt 12:46-50), “My mother and brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it.” (Lk 8:19-21). Because Jesus tells us these things, we know that when Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one shall come to The Father, except through me”, (Jn 14:6), He is saying that living as He teaches us to live, is the way, the truth and the life, not that saying that we follow Him, is the way, the truth and the life. And because Jesus tells us these things, we also know that when Jesus says, “Whoever confesses me before men. I will confess him before My Father in heaven. And whoever denies me before men. I will deny him before My Father” (Mt 10:32, see also Lk 9:26 and Mk 8:38), Jesus is speaking of confessing Him by living as He teaches us to live. If we do not live as Jesus teaches us to live, then we will not be able to confess Jesus, even if our mouths say we are confessing Him. And if we do live as Jesus teaches us to live, then we will not be able to deny Jesus, regardless of what we say about Him. Many people try to confess Jesus with their mouths, but do not confess Jesus with their actions. These people have no voice with which to confess Jesus. And many people say they oppose Jesus, because they believe that the way they see people who call themselves Christians, act, is the way Jesus tells us to act, when the people who they see, are not acting as Jesus commands. People who do this, though they often do not know it, are speaking out in favor of Jesus, against people who are denying the true meaning of His teachings.
Jesus will be hated by the leaders of any society that He comes to, because Jesus tells all of us, about ways in which we are not living as Our Creator wants us to live, and because all people want to believe that they already are living as Our Creator wants them to live, and because the leaders of every society, are especially proud, and for this reason, have an especially strong desire to believe that they already are living as Our Creator wants them to live. Jesus tells us that most people in any society that He comes to, will hate Him, when He says, “The World hates me because I testify that its works are evil.” (Jn 7:6-8), and when He says. “The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness, rather than light, because their works were evil. (Jn 3:19-21).
When Jesus came to earth, the Jewish people were chosen as the people best suited to receive Jesus, because the Jewish people had a tradition of prophets, many of whom, had preached principles that were similar to the principles that Jesus preached. Many people in any society would have helped to kill Jesus, if Jesus had come directly to them. As many Jewish leaders did. What was unique about the Jewish people, is that many people from their society, tried to follow Jesus closely. These people formed the core of the early Christian church. We know that the Jewish people were chosen as the people best suited to hear Jesus’ teachings first, and to then pass those teachings on to the rest of us, because Jesus says, “I am sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Mt 15:29), and because Jesus also says, “I came that I might save the world.” (Jn12:47). If Jesus had been sent to another people, He probably still would have been killed, but then would also have been forgotten. As it is, Jesus was not forgotten; because many Jewish people kept His words alive, and passed His words on to the rest of us. If this had not happened, those of us alive today, would never even have heard of Jesus.
The only way in which any of us can follow Jesus, is by denying our desires, and especially denying our desire to believe that we are doing what our creator wants us to do. Jesus tells us that we must deny our desires, to be able to follow Him, when He says, “If any one will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily.” (Lk 9:23 & Mt 16:24, and when He says, “If any man does not hate his life, he cannot follow me” (Lk 14:26-33).
Our Creation, and the Creation of our world, is equally impressive whether this creation occurred slowly or quickly. I believe that this creation probably occurred over billions of years, through a process that is generally similar to our theory of evolution. Some people wrongly assume that this theory implies that we have no Creator. This would be impossible, though. If we exist, then we must have been created. The theory of evolution is simply our best attempt to describe how this Creation occurred. This Creation seems less impressive to some people, because it seems slow to them. Being slow or quick, is a matter of perspective, though. Compared to many other processes, a process that only takes four billion years, is very quick. This amount of time only seems great to us, because of our limited perspective. And the creation of life, is such a great achievement, that it will be astounding to any thinking person, no matter how long that person thinks it took.
Many people are also opposed to the theory of evolution, because it seems to them, that this theory describes a time when living as Jesus tells us to live, would not have helped a person, and because they assume that if this were true in the past, it would also be true in the present. The theory of evolution does not describe such a time, though. Because in the times it describes, it was even more important to have close friends, than it is today, and because any person who then lived as Jesus tells us to live, would have had closer friends and would have had fewer enemies, than that person would have had otherwise. Still, it is important to realize that there may once have been a time when following Jesus’ commands, might not always have helped a person. If there ever was such a time, though, then that time ended when Jesus died on the Cross. Jesus tells us that His death created a new covenant, when He says to His disciples, “Drink this cup. It is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you” (Lk 22:19-20, Mt 26:26-28, and Mk 14;22-24). Before this time, people were judged by different standards than we are judged by today, because those people lived under a different covenant. This is why many people who we read about in the Old Testament, may not have been punished for disobeying Jesus’ command not to resist evil. Today, though, we will all be punished if we try to emulate these people. The only way in which we can drink Jesus’ blood, is by living as Jesus tells us to live. Jesus’ blood flowed down from the cross to form the words of His gospels. Every time we read these words, and live by them, we are drinking Jesus’ blood. Every time we read these words, and live by them, we are eating Jesus’ body.
If Jesus had preached just as He preached, but had not died on the cross, we would not take His words seriously. We would say that talk is cheap, and we would think that Jesus was asking us to do things that He wouldn’t do. Because we all would have felt this way about Jesus, people who lived when Jesus preached, would not have preserved and passed on Jesus’ words, and people alive today, would not even be able to hear or read Jesus’ words. If anyone other than Jesus, urges us to live as Jesus tells us to live, but does not suffer as much as Jesus, or as publicly as Jesus, then we do not take that person’s words seriously, and then we say that talk is cheap and that, that person is asking us to do things that he or she would not do. Jesus knows this about us, and this is why He died for us: so that His teachings would come to us, and so that we would take His teachings seriously.
Before Jesus did these things, many people who have since learned from Jesus, may have been confused about what Our Creator wants us to do. This is why Our Creator expected less from people who lived before Jesus came to earth, and this is why Jesus’ death created a new covenant. Jesus says, “Whoever has been given much, much will be demanded of that person.” (Lk 12:48). The opportunity to learn from Jesus, is the most valuable thing that we have been given. Before the gospels had been written, many fewer people had this opportunity. Jesus tells us how valuable the opportunity to learn from Him, is and tells us that Our Creator expects more from people who have been given this opportunity, when He says to people who had heard him speak, but who had not learned from Him, “Woe to you Chorazin and Bethsaida. If the mighty works that have been done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, Tyre and Sidon would have repented long ago. It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you at the judgement: and also for Capernaum.” (Lk 10:10-16). The mighty works that had been done in Chorazin and Bethsaida, were Jesus’ works of teaching.
Living by the words of Jesus’ gospels, is the only way we can drink Jesus’ blood, and living by the words of Jesus’ gospels, is the only way we can eat Jesus’ body. And forgiving other people, as we need Our Creator to forgive us, is the only way we can live by the words of Jesus’ Gospels. As with all rituals, the ritual of drinking wine that we believe has been transformed into Jesus’ blood, helps us if it reminds us of teachings that help us. It helps us if it reminds us of the way that Jesus told us to live. Jesus tells us this, when He says, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Lk 22:19). If this ritual does not lead us to remember Jesus’ teachings, and to live more closely to the way that Jesus tells us to live, then this ritual is just as empty and as meaningless to Our Creator, as the ritual that Jesus tells us of when He says, “Woe to you, scribes and pharisees. For you pay tithe of mint, and anise and cummin, but have omitted the weightier matters of law, judgment, mercy, and faith. These are the things that are required of you, not the other.” (Mt 23:23 & Lk 11:42)
The division that Jesus brings to our world, that He tells us of, when He tells us of suffering His followers will have to endure, is not meant to be permanent. We know this because Jesus says, “I came that I might save the world.” (Jn 12:47). If the division Jesus brings, were meant to be permanent, Jesus would have said that He only came that He might save a part of the world, not the entire world. The division Jesus brings, is only a step we must take in order to be able to come together as Jesus wants us to come together. Every thing that Jesus tells us to do is something that will bring us together with other people, and if we do all that Jesus tells us to do, then we will come together as one with all people, as certainly as water flows down a mountain when snow melts on that mountain’s top. And then all people will live in harmony and brotherhood.
We must have the humility to always try as hard as we can, to do what Jesus tells us to do: to admit that we often can’t figure out what we should do on our own, and that we can often only know what we should do, if we have learned what we should do from Jesus.
I empathize with people who make the mistake of not trying to follow Jesus, because I share these people’s desire to make the same mistake that they make. We all share this desire. None of us wants to do what Jesus tells us to do. But if we are wise, we will do what Jesus tells us to do. Jesus tells us that no person will ever want to do what He tells us to do, when he says, “If any one will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily.” (Lk 9:23, Mt 16:24, & Mk 8:34). We will have to deny ourselves every day of our lives. We will never want to do what Our Creator wants us to do. Our only path to Our Creator’s favor is to see this, and to deny our desires; Every day. And Jesus tells us this again, when he says, “If any one does not hate his life, he cannot follow me” (Lk 14:26-33). We can never win Our Creator’s favor by doing what we want to do. We can only win Our Creator’s favor by taking Jesus’ yoke. A yoke is a wooden collar that binds two oxen together at their necks, and that keeps those oxen from leaving a farmer who is making them plow his field. Just as an ox will often wish to be free of a farmer’s yoke, we will often wish to be free of Jesus’ yoke. Jesus tells us, though, that “My yoke is easy, and my burden light” (Mt 11:30). When compared to the burden we would have to carry if we did what we want to do, Jesus’ yoke is very easy, and His burden very light indeed. Jesus tells us that, “Every one who sins is a slave of sin” (Jn 08:34). If we do what we want to do, we will serve the harsh master of sin, rather than the gentle master that is Jesus. Even Jesus had to deny what He wanted to do, in order to do what Our Creator wanted Him to do. Because of this, Jesus shows us the perfect example of how to deny ourselves. When Jesus was coming close to His crucifixion, He prayed to Our Creator, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will but as You will.” (Mt 26:39, 42 & 44, Mk 14:36, & Lk 22:42). Jesus did not want to die on the cross, but He did die on the cross, because Our Creator wanted Him to.
If a person wanted to do everything that Our Creator wants that person to do, then that person would be good, and then that person would not have to deny him or herself. This will never be though. Any person who tries to make him or herself want to do, what Our Creator wants him or her to do: That person will instead, make him or herself believe that what Our Creator wants him or her to do, is the same as what he or she wants to do. Such a person will not do Our Creator’s will, but will instead do his or her own will. Seeing our evil lets us see the good that Our Creator wants us to do. When we try to convince ourselves that we are good, we tell ourselves that Jesus told us to do much less than He actually told us to do, and we substitute things that are easier for us to do, for the more difficult things that Jesus actually told us to do. We will only be able to see what Jesus truly teaches, when we admit that we do not want to follow Jesus’ teachings. This is very hard for us to admit though, because each of us believes that if he or she does not want to do what Our Creator wants us to do, then he or she will be punished for this, and will be punished even more harshly for sometimes failing to do what Our Creator wants us to do. We will only admit that we do not want to do what Our Creator wants us to do, if we believe that Our Creator will not punish us for admitting this. This is why Jesus says to us, “If you forgive men their trespasses, then Your Heavenly Father will forgive you, but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, then neither will Your Father forgive you” (Mt 6:9-15, & Mk 11:25-26), “Forgive and you will be forgiven” (LK 6:37)
“Judge not, lest you be judged. For with whatever judgement you judge, you shall be judged.” (Mt 7:1-2, & Lk 6:37). If we judge by the standards of justice, then we shall be judged by the standards of justice. Justice is our enemy, and mercy our only hope. Jesus tells us what will happen to us if Our Creator shows us justice instead of mercy, when He says, “Agree with your adversary quickly; lest he deliver you to the judge, the judge deliver you to the officer, and you be cast into prison. If this happens you will not come out until you have paid the last cent.” (Mt 5:25-26 & Lk 12:58-59). When Jesus sees people who are about to stone a woman for adultery, He says to them, “Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.” (Jn 8:7). Jesus says this to remind these people that if they punish this woman for her sins, then Our Creator will punish them for their sins. Justice is our enemy, and mercy our only hope.
The good news that Jesus brings to our world is the news that we will receive mercy from Our Creator if we show mercy to our brother’s and sisters. We should all rejoice to hear this news. Because if we had to be good to receive good things from Our Creator, then none of us would ever receive good things from Our Creator. Jesus is showing us a way out of the misery we would know if Our Creator showed us justice instead of mercy. Jesus is showing us that our lives are not the hopeless tragedies they would be if Our Creator only gave good things to good people. Our Creator’s mercy allows us to get good things that we don’t deserve, and Jesus shows us how we can receive Our Creator’s mercy.
This is the part of Jesus’ teachings that differs most from the morality that we try to live by, and this is the part of Jesus’ teachings that does the most to help us do what Our Creator wants us to do. Jesus does not tell us to treat other people well because other people are good. Instead Jesus tells us to treat other people well because each of us needs things from Our Creator that we don’t deserve, and because Our Creator will only give us things that we don’t deserve, if we give other people things that they don’t deserve. Other people will often trespass against us and we will often not want to forgive other people for things they will do to us. If we do not forgive other people for evil they will do to us, though, but if we instead, try to do justice to people who do evil to us, then Our Creator will not forgive us for evil we have done to Him, but will instead do justice to us. Justice is our enemy, and mercy our only hope.
Trying to treat other people as they deserve to be treated would be trying to do justice to those people. This is the principle that has guided most people throughout human history and this is the principle that has led to our world being torn apart by greed violence and self-righteousness, and that has led to each of us being torn apart by greed violence and self-righteousness, and living by this principle will further tear our world apart, and will further tear each of us apart. This is so because we always convince ourselves that whatever we want to do to other people will promote justice, and because we all often want to fight with other people. When we want to fight, saying we are pursuing justice only leads to self-righteousness and hypocrisy. The only way of living that will heal the wounds of our world is trying to show other people mercy, in order to receive mercy we need from Our Creator, as Jesus tells us to do. This is so because even when we lie to ourselves and tell ourselves that the fighting we want to engage in, would lead to justice being done to people who we believe have trespassed against us, we will still try to help those people if we are trying to show them mercy in order to obtain mercy from Our Creator.
Why we are like slaves to Our Creator, and why we are not like slaves to any person. We are like slaves only to Our Creator because only Our Creator has given us all that we have (including every ability we possess and including our lives themselves). And we are not like slaves to any person, because no person has given us every ability we possess, and because no person has given us our lives. Our earthly parents do not give us these things. In the creation of life, earthly parents are laborers who bring materials to a worksite, so that Our Creator can do what no person could ever do. To call human laborers, Creators of life is like saying that a gardener gives life to a plant because he puts a seed in the earth. Our placing seeds in fertile soil, merely determines when and where Our Creator will create a new human life. Jesus warns us against imagining that any person is like Our Creator, when He says to His disciples, “Be not you called Rabbi, for you have a teacher and you are all brothers. And call no man father, for you have a Father in the heavens. Neither be you called master, for Christ is your master.” (Mt 23: 5-12 & Lk 20: 45-47). Calling people either rabbi, father, or master leads us to imagine that those people are like Our Creator, leads us to act toward those people in ways that we should act only toward Our Creator, or toward Jesus, and, and leads those people to try to act like Our Creator or like Jesus, when they should not do so.
Of course there are also many other names that also lead us to do these things and that should also be reserved for Jesus, or for Our Creator. Jesus does not tell us all of these names because He is not a secretary or a list maker. Jesus is instead our teacher and, if we are wise, Jesus will also be our master. If Jesus had tried to list every name we should reserve for Our Creator and for Him, He would have had to list many names in languages that his listeners did not know, and He would have had less time left for the rest of His teaching. Thankfully Jesus did not do this. Jesus tells us enough names for us to see what those names have in common (for us to see that those names lead people who use them, to act toward other people in ways that we should act only toward Our Creator or toward Jesus, and that those names lead people who are called by them to try to act like Our Creator or like Jesus), and then Jesus leaves it to us, to add to this list each time we learn of another name that would lead people to try to act like either Jesus or Our Creator. The names Reverend and Pastor are two names that lead us to do these things. A reverend is any object that is an end toward which reverence is directed. Revere no man for there is one in the heavens whom you revere. While people can be pastors to sheep, only Jesus can be a pastor to people. Call no man pastor, for Christ is your pastor. Lord is another word we should call only Jesus and Our Creator. If we call people any of these names and are still able to forgive people who trespass against us, then we will be forgiven for not calling only Jesus and Our Creator by these names. Calling people by these names is harmful to us, though, because it encourages us to follow people as we should only follow Jesus, and because following people will often lead us not to forgive people who trespass against us, by leading us away from Jesus’ teachings.
Many of you have probably heard that Jesus said the word servant on many occasions when Jesus actually said the word slave. This is due to reading from erroneous translations of Jesus’ words. This error can be corrected by reading an interlinear bible. This is a bible that shows the oldest text of Jesus words that has been found, (a text that is written in ancient Greek), and that also shows, word for word, the English translation of this Greek text immediately below the Greek text. Some interlinear bibles are not based on the oldest text of Jesus’ words, that we have found. Make sure that you read an interlinear bible that is based on this text. This text is usually referred to as either the Nestle-Aland text, or as the Westcott-Hort text. Online an interlinear translation that is based on this text, can be found at http://www.scripture4all.org/ . The best English interlinear translation I have found in book form, is a translation that was made by a man named “Alfred Marshall” in the 1950s. I have found the Nestle-Aland text with the Marshall translation, by doing a Google search on the words ‘Interlinear, Nestle, Marshall, KJV, and Amazon’. Here is the Internet address of a web page that shows a relatively inexpensive way to purchase this translation. http://www.amazon.com/Interlinear-KJV-NIV-Parallel-Testament-English/dp/0310950708
Sometimes it is easy to see that we do not want to follow Jesus’ commands. For example, none of us, wants to always follow Jesus’ command not to resist evil. We all often want to fight. But this would be a great mistake on our part. And this is why Jesus tells us not to fight. We all also do not want to follow Jesus’ command, “Give to every one who asks of you, and do not ask for anything back from one who takes from you.” (Lk 6:30 (27-36), see also Mt 5:42- 48). But again we will follow this command if we are wise.
Jesus does not want us to feel bad when we see that we do not want to do what Our Creator wants us to do. Because if we feel bad when we see this, then we will try to pretend that Our Creator wants us to do what we want to do. Instead Jesus wants us to see that because none of us wants to do Our Creator’s will, we all often do what Our Creator does not want us to do, so we will see that we need Our Creator’s forgiveness, and so we will forgive other people in order to get Our Creator to forgive us. If we forgive as we need be forgiven, then we will do all that Jesus tells us to do. If we do not do this, though, then we will not be able to do anything that Jesus tells us to do. If we wanted to do what Our Creator wants us to do, then we would be good. While this is impossible, if we see our evil, then we can forgive people who trespass against us, and then we can receive Our Creator’s forgiveness. And as a part of receiving this forgiveness, we can receive all the rewards that Jesus tells us of. Feeling bad about our inability to be good would stand in the way of our doing this. A person who feels bad when he or she sees that he or she cannot be good. Such a person will never allow him or herself, to see his or her evil.
Jesus wants us to freely admit our evil so we will freely ask Our Creator to forgive us our evil. As the Publican who freely admitted his evil to Our Creator was justified, while the Pharisee who tried to make himself look good to Our Creator was not justified. (Lk 18:10-14) So will it be with all people. Like this Publican we must say to Our Creator, “God be merciful to me, the sinner.” And unlike this Pharisee we must never try to make ourselves look good to Our Creator. And like this publican we must truly believe that we are sinners.
Jesus tells us about our evil, often, so we will become comfortable enough with our evil, to admit our evil freely. We might sometimes wish that we could be good, because if we were good, then we wouldn’t have to forgive other people their evil, to get Our Creator to forgive us our evil. Our wishing for this would be as useful as a rock wishing that it could fly, though. However hard we may wish, this will never happen. Wishing that we could be good, will never make us good. Wishing that we could be good, will only keep us from receiving Our Creator’s forgiveness.
The thing that we can do, that would help us most in trying to follow Jesus, is to ask the question, ‘What does Jesus tell us to do?’, as often as we can ask this question. If we do not do what Jesus tells us to do, then anything else that we do means nothing to Jesus: including most of the things that people do in churches that call themselves Christian churches. The thing that people do most in these churches, is call Jesus, Lord. Jesus tells us that many people who call Him lord, will not follow His teachings, and that their words will not help these people, when He says, “Not all who say, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father. On the day of judgement, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name?, and in your name cast out demons?, and in your name done many wonderful works? And I will say to them, “I never knew you. Leave me, you workers of iniquity.” (Mt 7:21-23: see also Lk 6:46). And Jesus tells us again that saying we will do what Our Creator wants us to do, only helps us if we then do Our Creator’s will, when he said, to the chief priests and elders of Jerusalem, “A certain man had two sons. This man said to his first son, “Go work in my vineyard.” This son said, “I will not”, but later repented and went. This man then said the same thing to his second son, and that son said, “I go sir”, but went not.” Jesus then asked, “Which of these two did the will of their father?” and when the person who Jesus was speaking to, answered “The first”, Jesus said, “Truly , I tell you the publicans and the harlots will enter the kingdom of God before you will.” (Mt 21:28-32).
People in churches that call themselves Christian churches, also practice many rituals that are meaningless if we do not live as Jesus tells us to live. Jesus tells us how empty and meaningless rituals are by themselves, when he talks about the rituals that were practiced in the church that He belonged to when He lived on earth. Jesus tells us this when He says to pharisees who belonged to this church, “You pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. You fools, did not He who made the outside of things also make their insides. Instead give alms of what you have and all things will be clean to you. You are like whitewashed graves which indeed appear beautiful from the outside, but are within full of dead men’s bones and all manner of filth.” (Lk 11:37-41 & 44, and Mt 23:25-28). Jesus tells us again how empty religious rituals can be, when He says “Woe to you pharisees. You pay tithe of mint, thyme, anise, and cumin, but omit weightier matters of law, judgment, mercy and faith.” (Mt 23:23 & Lk 11:42 ). Jesus never tells these Pharisees to change their rituals. Instead He tells them that their rituals are meaningless if these rituals do not help them to follow the law, to please the One who judges us all, to show mercy, and to have faith. We will do all of these things, if we do what Jesus tells us to do. And we will not do any of these things, if we do not do what Jesus tells us to do. Jesus tells us that we should not perform religious rituals at all if we are not at peace with our brothers and sisters, when He says to us, “If you bring a gift to the altar and remember that your brother has something against you. Leave the altar and first be reconciled with your brother, and then offer your gift.” (Mt 5:23-24), and Jesus warns us that religious rituals can keep us from doing what Our Creator’s wants us to do, when He says to people who thought that He should not heal on the Sabbath, “Who among you would not save a sheep that had fallen into a pit on the Sabbath day, and how much better is a man than a sheep. Therefore it is lawful to do good works on the Sabbath days” (Mt 12:9-13, see also Lk 6:7-11, Lk 13:10-17, and Lk 14:1-6).
Many churches that call themselves Christian churches, also hurt people who belong to those churches by encouraging those people to ask the question, “What would Jesus do?” Instead of asking the question, “What did Jesus tell us to do?” The reason this hurts many people, is that is that Our Creator does not always want us to do what Jesus would do. One example of this, is that Jesus tells us that on the day of judgement, He will judge many people, while Jesus tells us not to Judge, and never tells us that there is any time when we should disobey this command.
We never need to try to imagine what Jesus would do, to know what Jesus wants us to do, because Jesus told us everything that He wants us to do, when He preached on earth. Trying to imagine that Jesus wants us to do anything else is insulting to Jesus, and is dangerous for us. Asking the question “What would Jesus do?”, leads us to imagine that Jesus and Our Creator, want us to do many things that Jesus and Our Creator, do not want us to do. If Jesus did not tell us what to do in any situation, then in that situation Jesus and Our Creator, only care that we do whatever will most help us to forgive people who have trespassed against us. Imagining that Jesus and Our Creator, want us to do things that Jesus did not tell us to do, when he was on earth, is just a way of trying to put words into Jesus’ mouth. It is a way of pretending that Jesus and Our Creator want us to do things that other people want us to do. If any of us, truly wants to understand Jesus, we will study what Jesus told us to do, and we will not try to imagine anything beyond this. Jesus knows how to talk about things that matter to Him, and we insult Jesus when we pretend that there is anything that He cares about, but didn’t talk about when He lived. To tell us what Our Creator wants us to do, is the reason that Jesus lived, and if we had to guess at what Jesus wanted us to do, then Jesus would not be a teacher who we should follow. This is what people imagine when they pretend that we have to guess at what Jesus wants us to do. We don’t have to guess at this. If Jesus wants us to do a thing, then He will have told us to do that thing, when he preached on earth.
This is so obvious, that I believe that the people who started asking the question ‘What would Jesus do?’, were intentionally trying to pretend that Jesus wants us to do things that they knew Jesus did not care about. One obvious example that applies to many people who call themselves Christians, is the desire to imagine that Jesus is opposed to homosexuality. Jesus never told us to avoid homosexuality. If Jesus were opposed to homosexuality, then He certainly would have told us to avoid homosexuality. This is one of the reasons that so many people who call themselves Christians, try so hard to put words into Jesus’ mouth.
I also think that many of the people who ask the question, ‘What would Jesus do?’, think that it would be fun to imagine that we are more like Jesus than we are. If we truly understand Jesus, this is not fun to imagine though. Jesus had His role to play, and we have ours. And many parts of what Jesus had to do, were very difficult, and are certainly not fun for us to imagine ourselves doing. The most obvious of these things, is being executed by the government of His day. There are many things about our lives that we cannot know, and we may sometimes be forced to make choices in situations in which we will not know what we should do. But one thing that we can know, is that we will always be better off if we do what Jesus tells us to do. This is why it is so important for us to study what Jesus tells us to do. To try to truly make Jesus our master. Instead of pretending that Jesus wants us to do things that He did not tell us to do, so we can put words into Jesus’ mouth. Only people who are not trying to follow Jesus, would do this.
For us to be able to follow Jesus’ command not to resist evil, we must realize that each of us would do great evil, if he or she were led into great temptation, and we must realize that great poverty is a temptation that would probably lead each of us, to do great evil. If we forget this, then we will think that we are better than people who do greater evil than we do, instead of realizing that these people do greater evil than we do, because they have been forced to face greater temptation than we have been forced to face, and then we will not try to help these people, even though doing so is the most effective way to keep them from trying to do evil to us. Jesus teaches that each of us would do great evil, if he or she were led into great temptation, when He tells us to pray to Our Heavenly Father, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (Mt 6:5-15 & Lk 11:2-4). Jesus is telling us to pray that we be delivered from the evil we would do if we were led into temptation. It is this evil we truly need to be delivered from. Evil that is done to us does us little harm, compared to evil that we do. Jesus tells us that even the best of us are very weak when He says to His Disciples, “Pray that you know no temptation. Indeed the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Mt 26:41 & LK 22:46). This tells us that even though, Jesus’ disciples wanted to do good, if they were tempted, then Jesus knew that they would do evil. And Jesus tells us all to expect to do evil, to plan on doing evil, and not to try to avoid evil, when He says, “Use unrighteous mammon to make friends, so that when it fails, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.” (Luke 16:9). We will all try to live by unrighteous mammon, and when we try to live by unrighteous mammon, unrighteous mammon will fail us, and we will only be received into everlasting habitations if we have used the fruits of our unrighteousness to make other people our friends: if, instead of trying to avoid other people because we fear that their evil would corrupt our goodness, we see that we are evil, as they are evil, and we befriend them because their evil, like our evil, causes them to need help, as we need help.
Ever since Jesus preached, and in all places, conditions have seemed to be ripe for Jesus’ teachings to grow into a community of people who try to follow those teachings. But maybe they have not been. What we can be certain of, is that most of the people who call Jesus, ‘Lord’ today, do not try to follow most of Jesus’ teachings. If they did, then our world would be very different from the world we live in.
Nearly 2,000 years ago, Jesus told His Disciples that the time was ripe for their work, (see Jn. 4:35, Mt 9:37, & Lk 10:2). Jesus must have meant that the time was ripe for His teachings to be spread, but not for His teachings to be practiced. Jesus knew that His disciples might misunderstand this statement. Whenever Jesus says anything that any of us might honestly misunderstand, then what Jesus says, will help us, even if we misunderstand that thing. In this case, we can see this if we realize how much Jesus’ disciples helped themselves, by doing the work of spreading Jesus’ teachings. If misunderstanding this statement, was part of what gave Jesus’ disciples the courage to spread His teachings, then this misunderstanding helped them greatly.
I believe that now conditions throughout our world, are ripe for the growth of a community of people who will try to follow Jesus’ teachings. If these conditions are now ripe, then many of us will now be willing to try to follow Jesus.
We will be able to heal our world and our selves, if we follow Jesus’ command, “Give to every one who asks of you, and do not ask for anything back from one who takes from you.” (Lk 6:30 (27-36), see also Mt 5:42- 48), and if people who need help we can give, know that we will follow this command.
Most of the violence that people do, is done in order to get or to keep jobs. Including all jobs in which people work for police or military forces. And many other jobs consist of telling stories that perpetuate the myth that violence helps us more than it hurts us. (Including most jobs in the entertainment industry and many jobs in media and communications). One of the primary ways in which “Giving to every one who asks of us, and not asking for anything back from those who take from us”, will heal our world, is by creating a world in which no one is forced to take a job that requires him or her to commit acts of violence, or to perpetuate our culture of violence.
“Giving to every one who asks of us, and not asking for anything back from those who take from us”, will also heal our world, by creating a world in which many more of us, will be able to follow Jesus’ command, “Take no thought for your life, for what you will eat or drink, or for what clothes you will wear. Your heavenly father knows you need these things. Instead, seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. Take no thought for the morrow: for the morrow will take thought for itself. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.” (Mt 6:25-34 & Lk 12:22-32). Jesus tells us that it is Our Heavenly Father who will give food drink and clothes to people who seek first His righteousness, and we know that Our Heavenly Father usually gives gifts through the actions of people in our world. For this reason we know that most of the people who seek first His righteousness, and then receive food drink, and clothes, will receive these things, because Our Heavenly father sent Jesus to tell us to help each other, by giving us the command, “Give to every one who asks of you, and do not ask for anything back from one who takes from you.”, and by giving us the command, “Sell your possessions and give alms. Provide yourself with wealth that will not grow old, an unfailing treasure in the heavens that no thief will come near to, and that no moth will corrupt.” (Lk 12:33, see also Lk 18:18-25, & Mt 19:16-24), and by saying to a young rich man, “If you would be perfect, sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in the heavens. … It will be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Lk 18:18-25, see also Mt 19:16-24, Lk 12:33, & Mk 10:17-25). We see that this is how our Heavenly Father will give food, drink, and clothes to people who seek His righteousness, when Jesus says to His disciples as He sends them forth to preach His gospels, “Do not put gold or silver, or copper in your belts. Nor scrip for your journey. Neither a bag for the way, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor staves, for the workman is worthy of his meat. In whatever city you enter, find those who are worthy and stay with them until you leave. And eat what they give you” (Mt 10:9-11, & Lk 10:4-7).
Miracles that Jesus performs, also usually occur through the faith and the actions of people in our world. The gospel writer Matthew makes this clear when he tells us that when Jesus taught in His own country, “He did not many mighty works because of their unbelief.” (Mt 13:58). And Jesus Himself makes this clear by asking people whom He is about to heal, “Do you believe that I can do what you ask”, and after hearing the answer ‘yes’, saying, “As you believe, so be it.” The greatest Miracle Jesus has performed, is teaching us what Our Creator wants us to do, and teaching us how we can do what Our Creator wants us to do, so that we can receive great rewards from Our Creator and avoid great punishments from Our Creator. By doing this Jesus is teaching us what actions will work for us. In the physical world we can see what actions will work for us, without Jesus’ help, through the physical sciences. In the moral world, though, we usually need Jesus’ help to be able to see what actions will work for us. Inspiring us to help each other, is a part of the miracle of helping us do what Our Creator wants us to do. This may be the source of the miracle in which Jesus feeds over 5,000 people whom He had just healed and spoken to, with only 2 loaves and 5 fishes. (Mt. 14:14-21 & Lk 9:11-17). This miracle may have occurred because many of the people who had come to see Jesus, may have brought their own loaves and fishes, and may have put these in the basket that Jesus passed around, rather than taking loaves and fishes out of that basket. If this is how this miracle occurred, then this miracle is far greater than if Jesus produced loaves and fishes out of thin air, because Jesus inspires us to help each other every time we read His words, and because this miracle will, for this reason, be repeated countless times. And if this is how this miracle occurred, then this is a very impressive miracle, because it is not easy to inspire people to help each other. Jesus’ greatest power is His ability to do this.
Jesus’ teachings will heal our world, if any significant number of people in our world, try as hard as they can to follow these teachings. This will happen because these people’s actions will influence the actions of people they come in contact with, and then these people’s actions will influence people they come in contact with, and this ripple effect will transform our world. Because of this ripple effect, our world will be healed if even as few as one tenth of one percent of the people in our world, try as hard as they can to follow the teachings of Jesus. And any person who tries as hard as he or she can, to live as Jesus tells us to live, will heal the wounds that are tearing him or her apart, long before this happens.
We all doubt the claims that we will heal our world, if we try as hard as we can to follow Jesus’ teachings, and that we will avoid all of the mistakes that we make, if we follow Jesus’ commands, and we all doubt Jesus greatly. If this were not so, then those of us with faith in Jesus, would do everything that Jesus tells us to do, so that we could receive the rewards that Jesus promises to people who follow Him, and so that we could avoid the punishments that Jesus tells us will come to people who do not follow Him. Our inability to have great faith, is one of the limitations, that comes with being human. It is part of the reason that all human beings make great mistakes. If we claim that we have great faith, then we are denying our human fallibility. Claiming that we have great faith, also prevents us from developing the faith that we are able to have. Jesus often tries to discourage us from claiming that we have great faith. At least part of the reason that Jesus does this, is that He knows how dangerous it is for us to claim that we have great faith. Jesus may also have other reasons for doing this, but one thing that we know, is that any time Jesus tries to discourage us from doing a thing, then doing that thing is dangerous to us. In spite of this, most of those of us who call ourselves Christians, try to pretend that we have great faith in Jesus. Admitting that we have little faith in Jesus, allows us to ask questions that come from our doubt, that will allow us to build as much faith as we are able to have.
One of the reasons that we all doubt Jesus, is that to us promises that Jesus makes about rewards we will receive if we follow Him, often sound like inflated claims. One reason for this is that we often assume that Jesus is only talking about external rewards, when in truth, the things that Jesus tells us to do, will help us much more through the changes they will lead to within us, than through the changes they will lead to outside of us. And another reason that promises that Jesus makes about rewards we will receive if we follow Him, sound like inflated claims to us, is that sometimes we forget other things that Jesus says to us. For example, Jesus tells us we will receive all we ask for, when He says, “Ask, and it will be given you, seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, it will be opened.” (Mt 7:7-8 & Lk 11:9-10), “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” (Jn 14:14). How can this be true when Jesus also says, “If you do not forgive men their trespasses, then your father will not forgive you.”? What would happen if a person who did not try to forgive all people who had trespassed against him or her? What would happen if such a person asked? Would that person receive all he or she asked for? The answer to this question is that a person who did not try to forgive all people who had trespassed against him or her, would not be able to ask. This is true in the same way that a person who had no throat and no mouth would not be able to speak. Forgiveness is the voice that allows us to ask. We know this because we know that if Our Father has not forgiven a person, then Our Father will not give that person all that he or she asks for.
Asking questions that come from our doubt, is what allows us to build the faith that we are able to have by finding answers like these ones. If we had never asked the question, “Why do Jesus’ claims often sound unrealistic to us?”, then we never would have found these answers. If we are willing to admit that we all doubt Jesus, and if we are willing to ask questions that come from our doubt, then It is easy to find answers that build our faith in Jesus. But if we will not do these things, then the faith that we pretend to have, will crumble as soon as we face difficult circumstances. This is why so few of us, try to do most of the things that Jesus tells us to do.
Jesus tells us all that we have little faith, every time He says to us, “O you of little faith” (Mt 6:30, Mt 8:26, Mt 14:31, Mt 16:8, & Lk 12:28). The New Testament was originally written in ancient Greek, and was then translated into other languages, and the most literal translation of the original Greek phrase found in the New Testament, is “O you little-faiths”. Little-faiths, is a name that Jesus calls human beings, and is a name that we should remember, because it describes us well. Jesus tells us even more powerfully just how small our faith is, when He says to His disciples, “If your faith were as a grain of mustard seed, you could tell that mountain to move, and it would move.” (Mt 17:20). Jesus knows that no person will have enough faith to move a mountain. And this is at least part of the reason that Jesus tells us that people with faith, will be able to move mountains: so that all people who cannot move a mountain, will admit that their faith is too small to fill a mustard seed.
Why haven’t Jesus’ teachings already healed our world? There are two reasons for this. First, because most people who call themselves Christians, ignore most of what Jesus says, and do not try to do most of what Jesus tells us to do. And second, because Jesus’ teachings are weighed down by other teachings in the bible: (both in the Old Testament and the New Testament). Jesus is not only correct when He tells us how Our Creator wants us to live. But Jesus is also focused on those things that Our Creator cares about. Many commands in other parts of the bible, do not contradict Jesus commands, but are instead dangerous distractions that divert our energies away from trying to live as Jesus tells us to live. If Jesus does not tell us what to do in any area, then we know that Our Creator does not care what we do in that area. Things that Jesus does tell us to do, are already more than we can do, without us being distracted by trying to follow other commands. We must try as hard as we can, to follow Jesus, and as a part of doing this we must refuse to waste our time and energy trying to do things that Jesus did not talk about.
If Our Creator cares about what we do in any situation, then Jesus tells us what to do in that situation, or Jesus tells us what Our Creator will do to us in that situation. As Jesus does when He says “If you forgive men their trespasses, then your Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, then Your Father will not forgive you” (Mt 6:9-15). If Jesus does not tell us what to do in any situation, though, or does not tell us what Our Creator will do to us in that situation, then in that situation Our Creator only cares that we do whatever will help us most to forgive people who trespass against us, and we know that nothing that Jesus does not talk about is a necessary part of forgiving people who trespass against us. For example Jesus tells us not to judge, because not judging is something that we must do to be able to forgive people who trespass against us. Not judging is a necessary part of forgiving. One area that we know is not a necessary part of forgiving, because Jesus does not tell us what to do in that area, is the area of homosexuality. Many people mistakenly believe that Our Creator is opposed to homosexuality because passages in the Old Testament tell us to avoid homosexuality, and because Jesus says, “Do not think that I came to destroy the law of the prophets, I came not to destroy but to fulfill.” (Mt 5:17), and because these people assume that the old testament is the law of the prophets. While the law of the prophets is part of the Old Testament, there is much in the Old Testament that is not part of the law of the prophets. This is clearest to us in parts of the Old Testament that contradict what Jesus teaches. For example parts of the old testament that encourage fighting and warring are clearly not a part of the law of the prophets that Jesus has come to fulfill. Only parts of the old testament that reinforce what Jesus teaches, are part of the law of the prophets. This is also true of parts of the New Testament other than words that Jesus spoke when He came to earth. While every one who wrote in the New Testament did so as a part of an attempt to follow Jesus, people who wrote in the New Testament, often may have been mistaken in their understanding of Jesus. At least we know that people who read their words, often interpret those words as contradicting Jesus. One example of this, that I have seen, is a person interpreting paul’s statement that violent people are sometimes ordained to hold governmental power, as a contradiction of Jesus’ command “not to resist evil”, that this person believes negates Jesus’ command when governments sponsor violence. Paul is not contradicting Jesus, though. Paul made this statement in Romans 13:1-3 In this part of this letter, paul said that if a government holds power, then God has ordained that, that government will hold power. If paul was correct in this, then God must ordain that violent governments will sometimes hold power. When governments are violent, though, no person who follows Jesus, can serve these governments, or be a part of these governments. And if we hope to receive rewards that Jesus tells us of, then none of us can do these things. paul never encouraged any person to do either of these things. Jesus never promised that all earthly governments would be Christian. This would make life very easy for people who follow Jesus, but this is not something that we should hope for. And maybe God has ordained that most governments will not be Christian. In this passage paul also said, “rulers are not a terror to good works. … Do that which is good and you shall have praise of the same.” When he said this, paul must have forgotten about the rulers who killed Jesus. Just like all men, paul made many mistakes. But reading paul is still very important, because reading paul can help us follow Jesus. When paul says that violent people are sometimes ordained to hold government power, he says this to people who were trying to follow Jesus, when those people were the victims of government-sponsored violence, to try to convince those people not to resist that government violence. If paul is correct in saying that God has ordained that some governments will commit violence, then God has also ordained that people who choose to work in those governments, will not follow Jesus, and if God has ordained this then God has ordained that people in those governments will be punished for what they do. That violent people who hold government power, will suffer future punishment, is a part of the pattern of rewards and punishments that Jesus describes when He says, “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your comfort. Woe to you who have been filled, for you will hunger. Woe to you who laugh now, because you will mourn and lament. Woe to you when all men shall speak well of you, for your fathers spoke well of the false prophets. (Lk 6:20-26).
It is also possible that people who write in the New Testament about visions in which Jesus spoke to them, after His death, misunderstood Jesus, or did not actually see or hear Jesus in visions, as they believe they did. Whether or not these people truly saw, and correctly understood Jesus, we know that Jesus told us everything we need to know, while He lived on earth, and if Jesus has spoken to anyone in visions since then, what He has said is only a repetition of what He said while He was on earth, or is the application of what He taught while on earth, to specific circumstances a person faces, and could have been deduced without visions or voices (though without a vision or a voice, it might have taken longer for a person to deduce what Jesus may have told that person in that vision or with that voice.). If any vision a person sees or any voice a person hears, does not reinforce what Jesus taught while He was on earth, then that vision and that voice cannot have come from Jesus.
Every person who currently calls him or herself a Christian, will admit that we are now living under a different covenant than people in the Old Testament lived under. But most of these people, still try to use many parts of the Old Testament to guide the actions of people alive today. Commands that people who lived before Jesus, may have been wise to follow, and things that may have been wise for these people to do, would be foolish for us to do, today. This is probably easiest to see in all of the warring that these people did. Those of us who are alive today will be punished severely if we try to emulate these people, because we now live under the rules that Jesus told us. As a history of the people that was best suited to receive Jesus, the Old Testament is extremely valuable, but as a guide to actions today it is probably the most dangerous book that exists. While the leaders of the Jewish people helped to kill Jesus, many individual Jewish people became strong and committed followers of Jesus, and were the core of the early Christian church. A church that until the fourth century A.D. probably did try to follow Jesus. Since this time, we know that most Christian churches have not tried to follow Jesus, because this is when The Christian Church of that day, condoned the violence on which the Roman empire was built, by becoming the official religion of that empire.
One of the commands often found in parts of the New Testament other than the Gospels, is the command that we should separate ourselves from evil. One of the main themes of Jesus’ teachings, though, is that we all have evil within us, and are all often brought down by this evil. Jesus tells us this when He tells us to pray to Our Heavenly Father, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (Mt 6:5-15 & Lk 11:2-4). Jesus is telling us to pray that we be delivered from the evil we would do if we were led into temptation. It is this evil we truly need to be delivered from. Evil that is done to us does us little harm, compared to evil that we do. Jesus tells us that even the best of us are very weak when He says to His Disciples, “Pray that you know no temptation. Indeed the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Mt 26:41 & LK 22:46). Even though, Jesus’ disciples wanted to do good, if they were tempted, then Jesus knew that they would do evil. And Jesus tells us all to expect to do evil, to plan on doing evil, and not to try to avoid evil, when He says, “Use unrighteous mammon to make friends, so that when it fails, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.” (Luke 16:9). We will all try to live by unrighteous mammon, and when we try to live by unrighteous mammon, unrighteous mammon will fail us, and we will only be received into everlasting habitations if we have used the fruits of our unrighteousness to make other people our friends: if, instead of trying to avoid other people because we fear that their evil would corrupt our goodness, we see that we are evil, as they are evil, and we befriend them because their evil, like our evil, causes them to need help, as we need help. Jesus tells us that no person will ever want to follow Him, when he says, “If any one will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily.” (Lk 9:23 & Mt 16:24). We will have to deny ourselves every day of our lives. We will never want to be good. We will never want to do what Our Creator wants us to do. We will always fear and hate our brothers and sisters. And we will never want to forgive our brothers and sisters. This hate will always be in us. Our only path to Our Creator’s favor is to see this hate, and to deny this hate, Every day. And Jesus says, “If any one does not hate his life, he cannot follow me” (Lk 14:26-33). We can never win Our Creator’s favor by doing what we want to do. We can only win Our Creator’s favor by taking Jesus’ yoke. A yoke is a wooden collar that binds two oxen together at their necks, and that keeps those oxen from leaving a farmer who is making them plow his field. Just as an ox will often wish to be free of a farmer’s yoke, we will often wish to be free of Jesus’ yoke. Jesus tells us, though, that “My yoke is easy, and my burden light” (Mt 11:30). When compared to the burden we would have to carry if we did what we want to do, Jesus’ yoke is very easy, and His burden very light. Jesus tells us that, “Every one who sins is a slave of sin” (Jn 08:34). If we do what we want to do, we will serve the harsh master of sin, rather than the gentle master that is Jesus.
If we are guided by Jesus’ teachings, then coming into contact with evil will not make us more likely to do evil. Instead coming into contact with evil will make us less likely to do evil, because if we have started to understand Jesus, then we will see that evil is simply a result of being too weak to do good. If a person is strong enough and disciplined enough to do good, then being good will always help that person, and being evil will always hurt that person. But often we are all too weak and too undisciplined to do good. Each time we see examples of this, compassion will grow in our hearts, if we have started to learn from Jesus. And this compassion will do more than anything else, to help us follow Jesus. If we try to avoid people with evil tendencies, then we will never develop enough compassion to be able to follow Jesus.
One of the primary reasons, that Jesus’ teachings are able to heal our world, is that Jesus teaches that Our Creator expects different amounts of good from different people, when He says, “Whoever has been given much, much will be demanded of that person.” (Lk 12:48), and that knowing this, helps us follow Jesus’ commands not to judge (Mt 7:1-2 & Lk 6:37), to forgive people who trespass against us (Lk 17:3-4) (LK 6:37) (Mt 6:9-15), and to love our enemies (Mt 5:42-48). To be able to follow Jesus, we must have been given the wisdom necessary to understand that following Jesus will help us more than it will hurt us, and the strength necessary to live as Jesus tells us to live, and the good fortune to be led away from temptation that will be too great for us to resist. These are the things that Our Creator gives to people from whom He demands much.
When Jesus tells us to pray to Our Heavenly Father, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (Mt 6:5-15 & Lk 11:2-4). Jesus is telling us to pray that we be delivered from the evil we would do if we were led into temptation, and that we be delivered from the punishment that might come to us if we do this evil. Evil that is done to us does us little harm, compared to evil that we do, which does us great harm. Jesus tells His disciples that if they are tempted they will do evil, even though they want to do good, when He says to them, “Pray that you know no temptation Indeed the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Mt 26:41 & LK 22:46). Jesus tells us that He gives people who follow Him, the wisdom, strength, and good fortune that allow them to follow Him, when He says to His followers, “You have not chosen me, I have chosen you.” (Jn 15:16).
None of us can ever know if any person has been given the wisdom, strength, and good fortune necessary to follow Jesus, and this includes ourselves. Jesus tells us not to try to know these things when he says, ”Judge not, lest you be judged.” (Mt 7:1-2 & Lk 6:37). This command applies just as much to judging ourselves as it applies to judging other people. Jesus tells us that many people who say they follow Him, have not been given the wisdom, strength, and good fortune necessary to follow Him, when He says, “Not all who say, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father. On the day of judgement, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? and in your name cast out demons?, and in your name done many wonderful works?’ And I will say to them, “I never knew you. Leave me, you workers of iniquity.” (Mt 7:21-23: see also Lk 6:46). Our Creator demands that each of us to follow Jesus as closely as the wisdom, strength and good fortune to be led away from temptation, that we have been given, allow us to follow Jesus, and if any of us has been given enough of these things that Our Creator demands that, that person follow Jesus closely, then Jesus tells us that if that person does not follow Jesus closely, then that person, “Will be beaten with many stripes. But he who knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, will be beaten with few stripes.” (Lk 12:47-48). Though we can never know if any person will be punished for not following Jesus, because we can never know if that person has been given enough that Our Creator expects that person to follow Jesus more often than he or she does follow Jesus, and though we can also never know if any person will be rewarded for following Jesus, because we can never know how much Our Creator demands of any person, we do know that the more often any of us follows Jesus, the more likely we are to receive rewards Jesus tells us of, and that the less often any of us follows Jesus, the more likely we are to receive punishments Jesus tells us of. While we cannot judge how much Our Creator demands from any of us (including ourselves), Jesus tells us that, “There is one who judges.” (Jn 8:50) That one is Our Creator and we are to leave all judgement to Him.
Not all people will choose to seek Our Creator’s righteousness, once their needs for food drink and clothing have been met, but many of us will choose to do this, and if those of us who try to “Give to every one who asks of us, and ask for nothing in return”, are constant in our efforts, then over time, an ever greater portion of the people we give to, will do this. If any of us, tries to “Give to every one who asks of us, and ask for nothing in return”, then there will be many times when it will seem as if doing this will bankrupt us. And if we try to do this separately, then this may happen. But if we work together, and if we are steadfast in our efforts, then this will not happen to us. And whatever following this command does cost in material terms, will be less than what we currently spend in fighting with people who have things that we want, or who want things that we have. At root all human conflicts are the one conflict of people fighting over things they want, when they do not believe that there is enough of what they want, for them to share with the people they fight against. Any other reasons we say we fight, are just window dressing. And are just rationalizations we use to try to justify fighting against people from whom we want to take things, or who we fear will try to take things from us. The primary example that we often think is an exception to this rule, is the nazi persecution of Jewish people during world war II. But in truth this is an example of people trying to rationalize fighting with people they wanted to take things from. Before world war two, Jewish people in Germany, and in nearby nations, had many things that the people who were nazis, wanted to take from them, and seemed to be people who could be isolated more easily than other people, and who could then be victimized. And any other reasons that people who were nazis, gave for their actions, were just rationalizations they used to try to justify those actions in their minds. The same is true of every human conflict.
“Giving to every one who asks of us and asking for nothing in return”, will not only heal our world, but will also cost us less, materially, than the things we are currently doing to tear our world apart. Doing this will still have a cost, and this cost will often seem great to us, and will still often seem hard to pay, but we must always remember that “giving to every one who asks of us and asking for nothing in return”, will cost us less than the alternative would cost us.
This is true of every thing Jesus tells us to do.
As more and more people are able to think more about how they want to live, and think less about getting material things, the rewards that will come from following Jesus, will grow greater and greater, and the costs of following Jesus will grow less and less, until eventually the disparity between these rewards, and these costs, will become so great that all people will see it, and will choose to live as Jesus teaches us to live. This is the day when Jesus’ work will have been fulfilled. We know this because Jesus said, “I came that I might save the world.” (Jn 12:47), and because we know that no person can be saved unless that person lives as Jesus tells us to live.
What Jesus means when He says a person is just, is the opposite of what we mean when we say a person is just. We see this when Jesus says, “When you make a dinner, don’t invite your friends, or your brothers, or your relatives, or rich neighbours; lest they invite you to their dinners in return. If this happens you will have been paid back. Instead, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind; and you will be blessed, because they cannot pay you back. For inviting these people, you will be paid back at the resurrection of the just.” (Lk 14:12-14).
When we call a person just, we mean that, that person gives other people what they deserve from him or her, but when Jesus calls a person just, He means that, that person gives other people good things that they do not deserve. (As Jesus made clear, in the preceding statement).
Jesus is also telling us that we help ourselves most when we help people who give us nothing in return. This is so because if we help people who give us nothing in return, then Our Creator will give us greater things than people could ever give us. Jesus tells us this again when He says, “Give to every one who asks of you, and do not ask one who takes from you to give anything back. If you lend to people you hope will pay you back, what thanks have you? Even sinners lend to receive as much again. Do good, hoping for nothing in return. And your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Highest: because He is kind to the unthankful, and the evil, And He makes His sun rise on evil men, and good, And He rains on just men, and unjust. Be you compassionate, as your father is compassionate.” (Lk 6:30 & 34-36, & Mt 5: 42-45), and when He says, “Sell all that you have and give to the poor. It will be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. (Lk 18:18-25, see also Mt 19:16-24, & Lk 12:33). Sell your possessions and give alms. Provide yourself with wealth that will not grow old, an unfailing treasure that no thief will come near to and that no moth will corrupt.” (Lk 12:33)
When we know what actions will hurt us, then we can avoid those actions, and when we know what actions will help us, then we can choose to perform those actions. This is why Jesus gives us all of the commands that He gives us.
Jesus does not tell us most of the ways in which living as He tells us to live, will help us. Instead Jesus simply tells us that living as He tells us to live, will help us greatly, and then He leaves the rest up to us. if we are wise we will follow Jesus’ commands. Sadly, though, most of us usually do not do this. It is good for us that Jesus focused His efforts on telling us what we should do, rather than on telling us why we should want to do these things, because we can see how living as Jesus tells us to live, will help us, on our own, but we could never discover all that Jesus tells us we should do, without Jesus. Other teachers teach some of what Jesus taught, but we can only learn all that Jesus taught us, from Him.
Seeing how living as Jesus tells us to live, will help us, is the greatest part of the work that Jesus has left for us to do. Seeing more of the ways that living as Jesus tells us to live, will help us, is the only way in which we can become able to do more of what Jesus tells us to do.
It would be better for us if we were able to follow Jesus commands, without seeing how following these commands, will help us. But it is clear that we cannot do this. If we are able to see more of the ways that following Jesus will help us, then we will be able to do more of what Jesus tells us to do. This seems to be our best and our only hope.
There are at least five reasons that are easy for us to see, why the teachings of Jesus, always make our lives better, and can heal our world. First, that Jesus tells us to give to people who need our help, when He says, … . Second, That Jesus tells us never to take part in violence, when He says, … . Third, that Jesus tells us that what matters is the truth about any person, not the false appearances that people often project, when He says, … . Fourth, that no person should ever try to act like God, (even though we all often try to act like God by being self-righteous, and by trying to command each other). Jesus tells us this when He says, … . And fifth, that Jesus tells us that what matters is how we treat other people, not religious rituals, when He says, … . There may also be many other reasons that Jesus’ teachings will always help us, and can heal our world. And I hope that other people will be able to see these reasons. These are just the reasons that I have seen so far. It is important for us to talk to each other about all the reasons we can see. Jesus left this task for us to do, because this is what we can do on our own. What we could never do on our own, is discover what it is that Our Creator wants us to do. The reason for this is that on our own we would never do any of these things long enough to receive any rewards from Our Creator. For example, without assurances from Jesus, we would all resist evil, as soon as not resisting evil became painful for us. And for a time not resisting evil will bring us mostly pain. Not resisting evil, will only later bring us rewards that will far outweigh our suffering. This is true of many parts of Jesus’ teachings, and Jesus tells us this when he says to His disciples, “Beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues. And you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake. And brother will deliver brother up to death, and the father the child: and the children will rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all men for my name’s sake: but he who endures to the end will be saved.” (Mt 10:17-18 & 21-22), “I came not to bring peace, but a sword. I am come to set a man at variance against his father, the daughter against the mother, the daughter in law against the mother in law. He who loves father more than me, is not worthy of me. he who loves son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. he who takes not his cross and follows me, is not worthy of me. he who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life, for my sake, will find it.” (Mt 10:34-39, Mt 16:24-26, & Lk 9; 23-25), and is why Jesus says to all of us, “Blessed are you when men will hate you, and when they will separate you from their company, and will reproach you, and cast out your name as evil for the son of man’s sake. Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy: for behold your reward is great in heaven, for their fathers did likewise to the prophets.” (Lk 6:22-23)
One important way in which not resisting evil, will help us more than it will hurt us, is by leading us to devote more of our energy to other ways of trying to avoid evil, that will be much more effective than trying to resist evil, would be. This is especially easy to see when we consider evil that people are only able to do once they have gained great political power. Resisting evil that other people try to do, does relatively little to reduce the amount of evil that other people do. What would do much more to reduce this evil, would be to try to change the economic circumstances that allow people who propose unusually high levels of violence, to gain political power. Such people can only gain great political power when great poverty is present in a society. We see this most clearly with regard to people who want to carry out genocidal killings. People who resist this evil tell themselves that they are effectively working to reduce this evil, when they are actually doing very little to reduce this evil. Instead, if we have pledged ourselves not to resist evil, then we will work much harder to change the economic conditions that might lead to people who propose genocide, gaining political power, and in this way we will succeed in reducing this evil to a much a greater extent than we would if we tried to resist evil. We do not see this, because we all want to believe that resisting evil is an effective way of reducing evil, so that we will not feel foolish when we resist evil. The reason that we all want to resist evil, is that we all want to lash out in anger at things that frighten us. It is very hard for us to resist this urge, but we must resist this urge if we hope to avoid the great mistake of resisting evil. We will be much better off if we follow Jesus, than if we follow our desire to lash out at whatever frightens us.
Following Jesus’ command, “Do not resist evil” (Mt 5:38-41) will lead us to avoid the suffering that comes from being victims of evil, more often than any other way of living. One reason this is so, is that when we try to resist evil, people who are trying to do evil to us, usually try harder to do evil to us, and another reason is that if we do not try to resist evil, then we will devote our energies to trying to make peace with people who would otherwise try to do evil to us, and that we will be able to avoid evil those people would do to us, much more often by trying to make peace with them, than by trying to resist their evil. If we follow Jesus’ teachings and still become victims of evil, we can know that if we had not followed Jesus, we would have become the victims of even greater evil. This is just as true between nations as it is between individuals. If Jesus wanted us to act differently when acting as part of a nation, than He wants us to act in our personal affairs, He would have told us this, and He would have said that His command not to resist evil, did not apply to the affairs of Nations. But Jesus never did this. People who call themselves Christians, and who pretend we should fight on behalf of nations, are looking for an excuse not to follow Jesus. For both nations and individuals one strong motivation of nearly all attacks, is the desire to get the first strike or first blow in against someone who we fear will attack us. If this fear is eliminated, then most attacks will disappear. And this fear will be eliminated if any nation or individual pledges publicly to follow Jesus’ command not to resist evil, and proves it is willing to stand by this pledge. People who will be more likely to attack someone who has made this pledge, will be far outnumbered by people who will not fight with that person because they no longer fear that person, and the people who will be more likely to attack, will be weaker than other people, because fewer other nations or individuals will cooperate with them, and as more of us come to see the folly of resistance, they will become almost entirely isolated, and their violence will come to be seen as the result of mental illness that it is. Most people who do attack a nation or an individual who refuses to resist evil, will soon realize they would be much better off with the wiling, eager, and voluntary cooperation of their victim, than they would be with a victim who does not resist their evil, but who is not eager to cooperate with a hated oppressor, and they will soon stop attacking that victim, so long as that attacker is not confused by the fear that will arise if that victim resists, and that has kept most of us from seeing the folly of resistance, throughout history. People throughout our world are coming more and more to see the folly of resistance that Jesus saw nearly 2,000 years ago, and finally I believe that a significant number of people will soon choose to follow Jesus by choosing not to resist evil. If this happens then soon the overwhelming majority of us, will see the folly of resistance, by seeing how much better those people’s lives will be than our lives.
Of course it is fear that keeps us from seeing the folly of resistance now, and for this reason it is the most powerful individuals and nations that have the least excuse for committing violence, and also for this reason, it is one of the most powerful nations that will probably be the first nation to renounce violence. Because I belong to the most powerful nation on earth, (The United States), and because I know this, I am especially ashamed of violence sponsored by the United States government. I know that because of Its great power the United States should already have renounced violence, because as Jesus tells us, “Whoever has been given much, much will be demanded of him.” (Lk 12:48).
After every war everyone who was involved in that war bemoans the folly that led him or her to fight, but before and during every war we refuse to learn from Jesus that we will be better off if we avoid war and fighting by not resisting evil.
It is often hard for us to believe that not resisting evil will always help us more than it will hurt us, because we often imagine ourselves trying not to resist evil, without also trying to do everything else Jesus tells us to do. Trying to do anything Jesus tells us to do will help us do everything else Jesus tells us to do, though, and will increase the benefits that will come to us from trying to follow Jesus. These benefits will be greatest if we try to do all that Jesus tells us to do. With regard to trying not to resist evil, Jesus’ other commands that will help us the most, are His commands, “Give to every one who asks of you, and do not ask one who takes from you to give anything back.” (Lk 6:30 (27-36), see also Mt 5:42- 48), “Sell your possessions and give alms. Provide yourself with wealth that will not grow old, an unfailing treasure in the heavens that no thief will come near to, and that no moth will corrupt.” (Lk 12:33, see also Lk 18:18-25, & Mt 19:16-24), and “Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in the heavens. … It will be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Lk 18:18-25, see also Mt 19:16-24, Lk 12:33, & Mk 10:17-25). Doing these things will create great good will toward us, and will greatly reduce the number of people who will try to attack us. (For even though most people who might try to attack us are rich not poor, if those people know that most poor people are fond of us, then they will fear that those poor people might stand with us against their attacks.)
The primary reason it is usually hard for all of us to follow Jesus, is that many things Jesus tells us to do, seem as if they will do us more harm than good. For example not resisting evil (Mt 5:38-41), and giving to all who ask of us and not asking for anything in return (Lk 6:27-36), seem as if they will do us more harm than good, by leading us to be beaten and to not have things we need to have to survive. What we forget, though, is that if we do what Jesus tells us to do, we will receive rewards from Our Creator, and avoid punishments from Our Creator, that will more than make up for any suffering we will know from following Jesus. So that if these things do happen to us because we follow Jesus, then other things will also happen to us that will more than make up for the suffering that being beaten or temporarily being without things we need, would cause us. If following Jesus sometimes leads us to suffer, not following Jesus would lead us to suffer more, or would lead us to not receive rewards that would more than make up for our suffering. For this reason what Jesus tells us to do is simply what will work best for us. Jesus tells us this when He says to his disciples, “Beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues. And you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake. And brother will deliver brother up to death, and the father the child: and the children will rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all men for my name’s sake: but he who endures to the end will be saved.” (Mt 10:17-18 & 21-22) Jesus tells us this again when He says to all of us, “I came not to bring peace, but a sword. I am come to set a man at variance against his father, the daughter against the mother, the daughter in law against the mother in law. He who loves father more than me, is not worthy of me. he who loves son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. he who takes not his cross and follows me, is not worthy of me. he who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life, for my sake, will find it.” (Mt 10:34-39, Mt 16:24-26, & Lk 9; 23-25), when He says, “Blessed are you when men will hate you, and when they will separate you from their company, and will reproach you, and cast out your name as evil for the son of man’s sake. Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy: for behold your reward is great in heaven, for their fathers did likewise to the prophets.” (Lk 6:22-23), “and when He says “Fear not those who can kill the body but are not able to kill the soul. Fear instead He who can destroy both the body and the soul.” (Mt 10:28 & Lk 12:4-5) Jesus tells us that if we live as Our Creator wants us to live, we will receive all that we need, when He says, “Take no thought for your life, for what you will eat or drink, or for what clothes you will wear. Your heavenly father knows you need these things. Instead, seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. Take no thought for the morrow: for the morrow will take thought for itself. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.” (Mt 6:25-34 & Lk 12:22-34)
Part of the reason it is hard for us to believe that doing what Jesus tells us to do, will help us more than it will hurt us, is that we often imagine the short-term effects of starting to follow Jesus’ command not to resist evil, in the most difficult situations we face, while we ignore the long-term effects of following Jesus’ command not to resist evil, which if we had followed Jesus in the past would have included preventing most of the most difficult situations we face, from arising, and which will often prevent similar situations from arising in the future.
Jesus died for each of us, but if any of us, does not live as Jesus teaches us to live, then that person will be refusing to accept what Jesus has done for him or her, and then that person will not benefit from the work Jesus has done for us. One of the he most strongly held and most erroneous beliefs that most people who call themselves Christians, have about Jesus, is that all they have to do to benefit from work Jesus has done, is say they follow Him. Often, people who believe this, express this belief by imagining a person who has faith in Jesus, but who does not perform the works that Jesus tells us to perform. These people are imagining what is impossible. If a person has faith in Jesus, then that person will do what Jesus tells us to do, and the more faith any person has in Jesus, the more that person will do of what Jesus tells us to do. To the extent that we have faith in anyone, we will do what that one tells us to do. This is what it means to have faith.
Jesus tells us that words will not help us, if we do not live as He teaches, when He says, “Not all who say, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father. On the day of judgement, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name?, and in your name cast out demons?, and in your name done many wonderful works? And I will say to them, “I never knew you. Leave me, you workers of iniquity.” (Mt 7:21-23: see also Lk 6:46). How closely Our Creator expects us to follow Jesus’ teachings, varies for each of us, as Jesus tells us when He says, “Whoever has been given much, much will be demanded of him.” (Lk 12:48). Those of us who have been given much, are expected to follow Jesus closely, while those of us who have been given less, are expected to follow Jesus less closely. Jesus tells us not to try to determine how much is expected of any person, when He tells us not to judge, (Mt 7:1-2, & Lk 6:37), and Jesus shows us how we should act when He says to us, “I Judge no man”, (Jn 8:15). Jesus has told us, though, that when He returns to earth, He will judge. Until then Jesus is only telling us how we will be judged, so that we can prepare ourselves. Even now, though, Jesus tells us that, “There is one who judges.” (Jn 8:50). That One is Our Creator and we are to leave all judgement to Him. How closely any of us, is expected to follow Jesus, depends especially on how great an opportunity we have had to learn from Jesus, how we should live, and on how easy it should be for us to recognize that the way Jesus teaches us to live, is the way Our Creator wants us to live. Jesus tells us this when He says, “Woe to you Chorazin and Bethsaida. If the mighty works that have been done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, Tyre and Sidon would have repented long ago. It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you at the judgement: and also for Capernaum.” (Lk 10:10-16). The mighty works that had been done in Chorazin and Bethsaida, were Jesus’ works of teaching. The greatest miracle Jesus has performed is teaching us how we can gain Our Creator’s favor. Everything Jesus teaches us to do, is a part of forgiving people who we believe have trespassed against us, as we need Our Creator to forgive us, and we know what will happen to us if we do not forgive, because Jesus says to us, “If you forgive men their trespasses, then your Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, then neither will Your Father will forgive you” (Mt 6:9-15), “Forgive if you would be forgiven.” (Lk 6:37, see also Mt 6:9-15, and Mt 18:23-35)
Any church that teaches that the help Jesus offers us, can come to us even if we do not live as Jesus teaches us to live, is what I call a salesmanship church; because people in that church are following the first rule of salesmanship by telling people who listen to them, what they think those people want to hear. In every realm controlled by salesmanship, people tell us that we can get what we want at little or no cost, and if we are wise we will know that they are usually lying to us. Jesus’ teachings are the most important area in which we should be aware of this fact. Jesus is no salesman. He tells us many things that He knows we do not want to hear, because He knows that those things will help us. And this is why Jesus is so unpopular with people who understand His teachings. Jesus tells us that all people will hate Him when He says, “The World hates me because I testify that its works are evil.” (Jn 7:6-8), and when He says. “The light has come into the world, and men loved darkness, rather than light, because their works were evil. (Jn 3:19-21).
Christ told people what they needed to know.
But they didn’t want to hear it and they told him so.
Then they nailed Him to a cross and they killed Him slow.
And we twist His words so we can squirm away.
From the light that He brings, turning night into day.
Many people prefer calling rewards that Jesus tells us of, consequences of the moral laws of our universe, rather than calling them rewards that Our Creator gives to people who do what Our Creator wants us to do. These are just two different ways of saying that certain actions will bring us more that will help us and less that will harm us than other actions will. If we do what Our Creator wants us to do, then it doesn’t matter whether we call the good fortune that then comes to us, rewards from Our Creator or consequences of moral laws of our universe. It also doesn’t matter whether Our Creator has created Our World in such a way that we automatically receive rewards for following Jesus’ teachings, or whether Our Creator intervenes to reward people who follow Jesus’ teachings. This is why Jesus doesn’t tell us about these things.
When things are going well for us we all want to imagine that Our Creator has no expectations of us and that there are no moral laws in our universe that we must follow to have continued good fortune, and when things are going well for us many of us choose to believe that Our Creator does not care what happens in our world, and choose to believe that we do not even have an intelligent creator. When things are not going well for us, though, then we are glad that Our Creator has expectations of us and that there are moral laws in our universe, because then we will want to do what Our Creator expects us to do so that we can receive rewards Our Creator will give to people who do what Our Creator wants us to do.
Whatever we want, though, doesn’t change our reality. Our reality is that Our Creator does not have expectations of us in all situations, (that there are not moral laws we will be rewarded for following in every situation), but that in many situations Our Creator does expect us to act in certain ways, and that in these situations there are moral laws we will be rewarded for following, and will be punished for not following.
We all have a strong desire to imagine that we are better than we actually are, and to imagine that people we feel connected to are better than they actually are. This desire, leads many of us to imagine that churches we belong to, teach Jesus’ true teachings, much more often than they actually do. That we are all much weaker and much more evil, than we want to imagine ourselves to be, is one of the most valuable lessons that Jesus teaches us. Jesus teaches this lesson most powerfully, when He tells us that, “The kingdom of heaven is like a Lord who forgave one of His slaves a great debt, and who later learned that, that slave had refused to forgive another slave a much smaller debt. That Lord then said to that slave, ‘O you wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you asked me to: Shouldn’t you also have pitied your fellow slave, as I pitied you?’ Then his Lord delivered this slave to his tormentors, till he had paid all that he owed. So also will my Heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you, from your heart, forgives your brother?" (Mt 18:23-35). Like each of us, the slave who was forgiven a great debt, and who then refused to forgive his brother a much smaller debt, chose to forget the debt that he had been forgiven, so that he could imagine that he was better than he actually was. Doing this is the reason that this slave refused to forgive his brother.
Jesus tells us again that we are weak and evil, when He tells us to pray to Our Heavenly Father, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (Mt 6:5-15 & Lk 11:2-4). Jesus is telling us to pray that we be delivered from the evil we would do if we were led into temptation. It is this evil we truly need to be delivered from. Evil that is done to us does us little harm, compared to evil that we do; which does us great harm. When we do evil, we harden our hearts against the victims of our evil, and against all people we might want to do evil to in the future. By doing this we make it harder for ourselves to forgive these people if they do evil to us, and by doing this we make ourselves less likely to receive Our Creator’s forgiveness. Not receiving Our Creator’s forgiveness would do far greater harm to us, than any evil other people could ever do. Jesus tells us that even the best of us are very weak when He says to His Disciples, “Pray that you know no temptation. Indeed the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Mt 26:41 & LK 22:46). Even though, Jesus’ disciples wanted to do good, if they were tempted, then Jesus knew that they would do evil. And Jesus tells us all to expect to do evil, and to plan on doing evil, when He says, “Use unrighteous mammon to make friends, so that when it fails, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.” (Luke 16:9). We will all try to live by unrighteous mammon, and when we try to live by unrighteous mammon, unrighteous mammon will fail us, and we will only be received into everlasting habitations if we have used the fruits of our unrighteousness to make other people our friends: if, instead of trying to avoid other people because we fear that their evil would corrupt our goodness, we see that we are evil, as they are evil, and we befriend them because their evil, like our evil, causes them to need help, as we need help.
And Jesus tells us that we will all try to imagine that we are better than we are, when He says, “The light has come into the world, and men loved darkness, rather than light, because their works were evil. Everyone who does evil, hates the light, and stays away from the light for fear his works will be reproved” (Jn 3:19-21), and when he says, “The World hates me because I testify that its works are evil” (Jn 7:2-8). And Jesus tells us that to follow Him we will have to overcome the desire to believe we are good, that keeps us from admitting that we all do many things that Our Creator hates, when He says, “If any man does not hate his life, he cannot follow me” (Lk 14:26-33). And Jesus tells us that we will have to deny our desires every day, to be able to follow Him, when He says, “If any one will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily.” (Lk 9:23 & Mt 16:24).
It is not only important for us to recognize our weakness as individuals, and the evil that it leads us to do, but it is even more important for us to recognize the weakness of all groups of people, that we consider ourselves connected to, (including both people from the present and people from the past), and the evil that this weakness leads people in these groups to do, because we are far more likely to do evil by following other people or by following tradition, than we are to do evil by following our own desires. Throughout human history, people have done much more evil in the name of following other people or of following tradition, than they have done in the name of following their individual desires. This is so, in part, because when groups of people try to do evil, people in these groups help each other, and for this reason, people in these groups succeed in doing evil, more often than do people who are acting on the basis of their individual desires. While we can only find happiness by living as Jesus teaches us to live, we must learn about the many different errors that can keep us from doing this, in order to avoid those errors, and we must see that following other people, and following tradition, are much more dangerous errors, than following individual desires, and we must fight much harder to avoid these errors.
People who discover that their church is not helping them learn how to follow Jesus, should not leave their churches. If any of us, belongs to a church, then we should like and care for people in that church, and we should want to do what is best for those people. When we see that we need to search elsewhere for assistance in following Jesus, we should try to bring our church with us by trying to transform that church into a place that can help us learn how to follow Jesus. Being part of a community in which people care about each other, is a good first step toward a better life; especially if people in that community know how to help each other. If we have not learned what Jesus teaches us, though, then we can only help other people in trivial and ultimately worthless ways. With Jesus, we can help each other receive Our Creator’s mercy, instead of Our Creator’s justice, and in his mercy Our Creator will give us all that we ask for.
Jesus’ commands not to judge, (Mt 7:1-2, & Lk 6:37), and to forgive if we would be forgiven, (Lk 6:37, see also Mt 6:9-15, and Mt 18:23-35), apply just as much to people who work in churches that call themselves Christian, but that seldom teach Jesus’ true teachings, as they apply to any other person. Instead of judging churches that call themselves Christian, but that seldom teach Jesus’ true teachings, we should work with people in these churches, to try to heal these churches. Currently existing churches are a step toward following Jesus because they have kept His words alive. But they are only a step because most people in these churches do not try to follow most of Jesus’ commands. These churches must transform themselves and must heal themselves by joining together as a new church that is dedicated to following all of Jesus commands. The first thought that most of us have about most currently existing churches, is the thought of people in these churches trying to kill people in other churches. And sadly people who have belonged to most currently existing churches have actually done this. And nearly all people who have belonged to currently existing churches, have tried to kill other people, whenever governments have told them to take part in wars or in capital punishment, and have tried to hurt people gravely whenever governments have told them to do this. Nothing could be further from following Jesus’ commands. This is why, by themselves, these churches cannot help us to follow Jesus. (Though these churches do have an important role to play in helping us learn how to follow Jesus, and though these churches must play this role for most of us to have any hope of being able to follow Jesus.)
What currently existing churches must do, is join together in a union church, while at the same time continuing as separate churches in all areas of ritual and ceremony.
The church that currently existing churches must join together in, must be modeled on the concept that Booker Taliafero Washington enunciated in his famous Atlanta convention speech, given in the 1880s. In all areas that are not essential to following Jesus, each church should remain as distinct as each of the separate fingers that make up a hand. (And these areas will include all matters of ritual and ceremony. Because ritual and ceremony are forms of celebration, and in matters of celebration, all people should do whatever is most comfortable for them.) But in all matters that are essential to living as Jesus tells us to live, these churches must join together as one, just as the hand that each finger belongs to acts as one in all matters that are essential to the common interest of each finger. And more closely following Jesus is essential to the common interest of every person. This is also the concept that underlies federalism, with each state government being as separate as each finger of an hand, and with a federal government only acting in areas essential to the common interest of each person in a nation.
The church that currently existing churches must join together in, must teach human weakness, frailty and evil, just as Jesus teaches human weakness, frailty and evil. And for this reason, this it should be named ‘the Church of Human Weakness’. Each currently existing church that joins this church will maintain its current name, but will also proudly announce that it is a member of the Church of Human Weakness, once it has decided to become a part of the movement that will allow us all to follow Jesus’ teachings more closely.
To allow existing churches to join together in the ‘Church of Human Weakness’, and to at the same time continue as they currently are in the area of ceremony and ritual, The Church of Human Weakness, will hold weekly meetings on Saturday instead of Sunday. Many members of the Church of Human Weakness, will be people who work in currently existing churches, who will come to the ‘Church of Human Weakness’ to learn how to follow Jesus more closely, and who will then pass what they have learned, on to members of the church that they work in. The symbolism of the life of Jesus, makes Saturday the day best suited for the activities of the Church of Human Weakness, and makes Sunday the day best suited for the activities of currently existing churches.
Jesus died for us on a Friday. Friday is when Jesus did the hardest part of the hard work that we cannot do for ourselves: Friday is when Jesus did the work that allows us to learn how we can win Our Creator’s favor. Jesus did the hardest part of His work on a Friday, and Jesus rose on a Sunday. Saturday is the day of decision for us. Saturday is the day on which we must prepare ourselves if we hope to rise with Jesus on Sunday. If we have not spent our Saturday learning how to follow Jesus, then on Sunday we will be on the outside looking in. And the greater Our Creator’s rewards are, the more strongly we will regret having wasted our Saturday.
Of course we must prepare ourselves to receive Our Creator’s mercy every day if we hope to receive His mercy, but the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection chooses Saturday as the most important day of preparation for us.
And Sunday is the day of celebration. On Sunday Jesus rose from the dead, and when Jesus rose, Jesus’ followers rose with Him. Sunday is the day of receiving rewards, but these rewards can only be received by people who prepare themselves to receive these rewards, by learning how to follow Jesus before Sunday comes. “Blessed is the slave who is found doing his master’s will, when the Master comes.” (Lk 12:35-48)
Sunday is the day best suited for celebration, if we have lived in a way that allows us to rise with Jesus. Currently existing churches are very good at celebration. And all of their rituals and ceremonies are part of their celebrations. Their greatest problem is that their current celebrations are false celebrations, because they celebrate a thing that will only happen if they help members of their churches, live much more closely to the way that Jesus tells us to live. This is what the ‘Church of Human Weakness’, will help people who belong to these churches, do. Then their celebrations will be entirely warranted.
Section 2.)
If we help other people, then Our Creator will give us help that we need, but if we do not help other people then Our Creator will not give us help that we need. Jesus teaches us this when He says, “If you forgive men their trespasses, then your Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, then neither will Your Father forgive you” (Mt 6:9-15). This is the heart of all that Jesus teaches us. Everything Jesus tells us to do is a part of forgiving people who we believe have trespassed against us. Because of this, each thing Jesus tells us to do is something that will bring us together with other people. If we do all that Jesus tells us to do, then we will come together as one with all people as certainly as water flows down a mountain when snow melts on that mountain’s top, and then all people will live in harmony and brotherhood. Jesus also tells us that sometimes temporary division will be a necessary step toward all people coming together. Jesus tells us these things again when He says to all of us, “I came not to bring peace, but a sword. I am come to set a man at variance against his father, the daughter against the mother, the daughter in law against the mother in law. He who loves father more than me, is not worthy of me. he who loves son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. he who takes not his cross and follows me, is not worthy of me. he who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life, for my sake, will find it.” (Mt 10:34-39, Mt 16:24-26, & Lk 9; 23-25), We know that the division Jesus brings, is not meant to be permanent, because Jesus also says, “I came that I might save the world.” (Jn 12:47). If Jesus had meant to bring permanent division to our world He would have said that He only came that He might save part of our world; not our entire world.
Most human division, though, is not a step that will later help us come together with all other people, and for this reason most human division is an unmitigated evil that causes only suffering, and that comes from the evil that is in all of us, that Jesus has come to our world to heal. This includes the great division that has come from people misunderstanding Jesus. At this point in the history of our world, this division is far greater than the division that has come to our world from people trying to follow Jesus’ true teachings. If our world is ever to be saved, as Jesus wants our world to be saved, then someday this will change, (And if most of those of us who call ourselves Christians, try to follow Jesus’ true teachings, this day will come soon). In our world today, we should often stay divided from the groups we are encouraged to join, because in our world today, most of the times that people come together, they do so in order to divide themselves from, and fight against other groups of people. This is especially true of people coming together in nations or states. If our world is ever to be saved, as Jesus wants our world, to be saved, then nations and states, like all groups that do not include all people in our world, must only be stepping stones that allow us to practice coming together with people nearest to us first, so we can later come together with all people, and must never keep us apart from people in other groups. When people allow groups they belong to, to divide them from people in other groups, though, we should stand against these groups. The temporary division we will cause by doing this, will be a step toward later coming together with all people. Jesus tells us of the importance of sometimes standing against other people when He says, “Blessed are you when men will hate you, and when they will separate you from their company, and will reproach you, and cast out your name as evil for the son of man’s sake. Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy: for behold your reward is great in heaven, for their fathers did likewise to the prophets.” (Lk 6:22-23). Because nations and states usually keep us apart, people who, like Jesus, want our world to come together, often hope for a world without nations, and often imagine a world without countries. What these people imagine will become reality if our world does come together so that it might be saved, but this will not happen immediately, and until it does happen we must work to eliminate ways in which nations and states keep us apart. Many things that Jesus teaches us, counteract the forces that pull us apart into separate groups that often fight with each other. Probably the most memorable of these teachings, are when Jesus says to us, “Love your enemies”, (Mt 5:42-48) , and when Jesus tells us to love our neighbours as ourselves, (Mt 22:37-40), and when He then tells us that our neighbour is anyone who needs our help. Jesus tells us this when He tells a man who had asked Him, “who is my neighbour?” about a Samaritan who helped an injured Jew when other Jews would not help that person, and then asks the man He was speaking to, “Who was this injured man’s neighbour?” When the man Jesus had asked this of, answered, “He who showed mercy on the injured man”, Jesus replied, “You, go and do likewise.”(Lk 10:25-37). Every thing Jesus teaches us to do will help us come together with other people in ways that will allow us to avoid coming together in groups that divide us from each other.
The greatest cause of suffering in our world is human division. We like to imagine that most suffering in our world, is caused by forces outside of us, but when we imagine this we are lying to ourselves. Wars, violence, and cruelty lead to more suffering than any other causes. Even in the case of natural disasters, most suffering is still the result of human division, and would be averted if we helped each other prepare for natural disasters. For example in wealthy nations we build so that few people are killed by powerful earthquakes, but because of weaker buildings, less powerful earthquakes frequently kill tens of thousands of people in poorer nations.
We can see that following the teachings of Jesus, will heal the division that causes most of our suffering, when Jesus says, “Sell your possessions and give alms. Provide yourself with wealth that will not grow old, an unfailing treasure in the heavens that no thief will come near to, and that no moth will corrupt.” (Lk 12:33, see also Lk 18:18-25, & Mt 19:16-24), when Jesus says “Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in the heavens. … It will be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Lk 18:18-25, see also Mt 19:16-24, Lk 12:33, & Mk 10:17-25), and when Jesus says, “Give to every one who asks of you, and do not ask one who takes from you to give anything back.” (Lk 6:30 (27-36), see also Mt 5:42- 48). We realize that if even a small percentage of those of us who call ourselves Christians tried to do these things, then earthquakes in poor nations would kill no more people than equally powerful earthquakes in rich nations. And when Jesus says, “If you forgive men their trespasses, then your Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, then neither will Your Father forgive you” (Mt 6:9-15), “Forgive if you would be forgiven.” (Lk 6:37, see also Mt 6:9-15, and Mt 18:23-35), and, “Judge not, lest you be judged. For with whatever judgement you judge, you shall be judged.” (Mt 7:1-2, & Lk 6:37), we realize that great healing would occur if even a small percentage of those of us who call ourselves Christians tried to live as Jesus tells us to live. We also realize this when we hear Jesus say,
“You have heard it said that whoever kills shall be liable to judgement, but I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgement, and that whoever says ‘You fool’ to his brother shall be liable to hell fire.” (Mt 5:21-24),
“You have heard it said: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you: Do not resist evil: If a man strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him your left. If a man judges you and takes away your coat, offer him your cloak also. If a man compels you to go a mile, go with him two.” (Mt 5:38-41),
“You have heard it said: Love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I say to you: Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who abuse you; so that you may be sons of your father in the heavens. For He makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Mt 5:42-48)
“If your brother trespasses against you, first tell him his fault in private. If he will not hear you, then go to him again and bring some witnesses with you. If he still will not hear you, then tell it to the church. If he will not hear the church, then let him be as a stranger to you.” (Mt 18:15-17),
“If your brother trespasses against you, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him; even if He trespasses against you and repents seven times in a day.” (Lk 17:3-4),
“Agree with your adversary quickly; lest he deliver you to the judge, the judge deliver you to the officer, and you be cast into prison. If this happens, you will not come out until you have paid the last cent.” (Mt 5:25-26 & Lk 12:58-59),
“Whoever among you wants to become great, he will be your servant, and whoever among you wants to be first, he will be your slave.” (Mt 20:26-27, see also Lk22:25-27, Mk 10:42-44, & Mt 23:11),
“Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” (Mt 23:12, Lk 14:11, & Lk 18:14).
“Whoever will humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Mt 18:4),
“Blessed are the meek.” (Mt 05:05)
“Why do you see the mote in your brother’s eye, but ignore the beam in your own? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me pull the mote out of your eye’, when you have a beam in your own? You hypocrite, first pull the beam out of your eye, then you will see clearly to take the mote out of your brothers eye.” (Mt 7:3-5, & Lk 6:41-42),
“Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.” (Jn 8:7),
“As you would have men do to you, do you likewise to them.” (Lk 6:31, & Mt 7:12)
“You shall love your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind, this is the first great commandment. The second is you shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Mt 22:37-40),
“Take no thought for your life, for what you will eat or drink, or for what clothes you will wear. Your heavenly father knows you need these things. Instead, seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. Take no thought for the morrow: for the morrow will take thought for itself. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.” (Mt 6:25-34 & Lk 12:22-34),
“You are an offence to me, because you do not think of things of God, but think instead, of things of men.” (Mt 16:23, & Mk 8:33),
And when Jesus tells us to always put Our Creator’s desire ahead of our desire, when He says, “When You pray (start your prayers) thus, ‘Our Heavenly Father, let your name be hallowed, let your kingdom come, let your will come to pass.’” (Mt 6:5-15 & Lk 11:2-4).
Churches and Ancestors
Throughout human history churches that call themselves Christian churches, have usually led their members to misunderstand and ignore Jesus’ teachings to such an extent, that throughout history the actions of most people who have called themselves Christians, have usually been almost the exact opposite of what Jesus tells us to do. (Just as throughout history the actions of most people who have not called themselves Christians, have also usually been almost the exact opposite of what Jesus tells us to do.) For nearly 2,000 years now people who have wanted to pretend to follow Jesus, have been twisting and perverting His words, and the center of this obfuscation has been churches that have called themselves Christian churches. So we should not be surprised that these churches have devised many effective ways of denying the true meaning of Jesus’ words, and have led many people away from living as Jesus teaches us to live.
Jesus tells us that none of us, want to follow Him when He says, “The World hates me because I testify that its works are evil.” (Jn 7:6-8), and when He says. “The light has come into the world, and men loved darkness, rather than light, because their works were evil. (Jn 3:19-21). Though none of us want to follow Jesus, If we understood Jesus’ teachings correctly, many of us would see that following those teachings, is our best option, because not following Jesus’ teachings would lead us to greater suffering than following Jesus’ teachings. While great clouds of confusion have been raised around Jesus’ teachings, those teachings are so clear and unequivocal that we will still be able to see them through these clouds, if we are aware of the difficulties that we must overcome.
While we must recognize our need to follow Jesus more closely than these churches have led us to follow Him, we must also be grateful to these churches for keeping Jesus words alive and allowing us to hear or read these words, because without these churches, Jesus’ teachings would have been lost, and those of us alive today, would never have even heard of Jesus and would not know anything about Him. Maybe preserving Jesus’ words and passing them on to us so we could follow them, is all Our Creator expected our ancestors to do. We know that Our Creator expects more from some people than from other people, because Jesus says to us, “Whoever has been given much, much will be demanded of him.” (Lk 12:48). We who are alive today have been given much more than our ancestors were given, so we know that more is demanded of us, than was demanded of them. While our ancestors were able to keep Jesus’ words alive but were not able to follow them, because of all that we have been given, we who are alive today should be able to follow those teachings. And if our generation follows Jesus’ teachings, we will transform our world so that generations that follow us, will be able to follow Jesus more closely than we will be able to, and so that it will require effort and historical imagination on their part for them to understand how we could have been so immoral. This is the meaning of human progress, and this is the way our descendants can best honor us, (by becoming better people than we are), just as this is the way we can best honor our ancestors. I do not want to believe that our generation will be the first generation to live as Jesus tells us to live. I would much rather believe that our ancestors have been living as Jesus tells us to live, for many generations, but the facts of world history will not allow me to believe this. For many years I have tried to ignore these facts and believe this in spite of these facts; because I did not want to think badly of my ancestors. Now I see, though, that maybe my ancestors did as much as was demanded of them, based on the fact that they were given much less than I have been given, and now that I have learned the importance of not judging from Jesus, I will try not to make any judgement about my ancestors, just as I try not to make any judgement about all people, but try instead to leave all judgement to Our Creator. Understanding this is the key to being able to maintain strong values in our personal behavior, without these values leading us to do great harm to ourselves and to other people by trying to judge those people. Because most of us do not have this understanding, we believe that we have to choose to either abandon all personal values or become a judgemental danger to ourselves and other people. In either case we would be giving up something of great value. Teaching us that we do not have to make this choice, is one of the greatest lessons Jesus teaches us.
Jesus tells us often, that people with evil histories can become good enough to receive the forgiveness we all need, if those people repent (Mt 4:17, Mt 9:13, Lk 5:32, & Lk 13:1-5), if those people freely admit their evil like the publican who beat his chest, hung his head, said ‘God be merciful to me, the sinner’, and was justified. (Lk 18:10-14), and if those people forgive people who trespass against them. (Mt 6:9-15, Lk 6:37, and Mt 18:23-35). We know it is important to Our Creator that this happens often, because Jesus says to us, “There will be more rejoicing in heaven for one sinner who repents than for ninety nine just men who have no need of repentance.” (Lk 15:7 & Mt 18:12-14). This is also important to all of us because good can only come from evil. Good is evil that has been transformed. Our natural state is a state in which we only pursue self-interest. This is how we all enter our world, and while this pursuit does not always lead us to do evil, it often does. Jesus shows us how we can transform ourselves into beings who will always do good.
Because Our Creator has created the free will that allows many of us to often choose what we will do, (and that may allow some of us to always choose what we will do), it may be that not every person will become good enough to receive rewards from Our Creator, but this is what Our Creator wants to happen. Jesus tells us this when He says, “I came that I might save the world.” (Jn 12:47). This tells us that Our Creator wants every person in our world to be saved, and if any of us, is saved then the evil in us will have been transformed into good.
Not every part of us that is evil, can be transformed into something good.. Some of the evil that exists in us, must be eliminated. But a great deal of the evil in our world, (possibly most of the evil in our world), comes from misguided attempts to obtain good things in harmful ways, and this type of evil can always be transformed into good, and is the origin of all good things that exist in our world.
For these reasons we must try to reform all parts of our world, rather than trying to eliminate parts of our world that have evil histories. If we did this we would try to eliminate all parts of our world, including all organizations in our world, and including all churches that call themselves Christian churches. We should instead try to reform these churches by trying to establish a truly Christian church that teaches human weakness frailty and evil as Jesus taught human weakness frailty and evil, (a church of human weakness), and by inviting currently existing churches that are dedicated to reform, to join this church, in the same way that independent political states sometimes join together to form nations in which a federal government exists alongside state governments. In all matters of religious ritual and ceremony each currently existing church should continue on its current path, with each church differing from all other churches, because rituals and ceremonies are forms of celebration and in matters of celebration, all styles are equally good. (Whether or not people in a church call themselves Christians). But in all matters that pertain to living as Jesus teaches us to live, all churches that are committed to reform, must strive to become like each other, and to become like the new church they will join together in.
Because only a church that teaches human weakness frailty and evil, as Jesus taught human weakness frailty and evil, can help us learn Jesus’ true teachings, the new church that all existing churches that are dedicated to following Jesus, must join, should be called “The Church of Human Weakness.” From the point of view of people in currently existing churches, “The Church of Human Weakness”, will be an ecumenical organization they will join to come together with many other churches, and will be an organization that will help all churches follow the true teachings of Jesus, and that will help people in all churches live as Jesus teaches us to live. Any church that teaches living as Jesus tells us to live, is welcome in the church of human weakness, even if that church is dedicated primarily to following another teacher, and even if people in that church do not call Jesus, God.
Jesus tells us often that we will all do evil, for which we must be forgiven. This helps us see that everyone and everything starts as evil, and that good is evil that has been transformed. Jesus tells us that the primary reason we all do evil, is that we want to believe we are good, when He says to the scribes and pharisees of Jerusalem, “You decorate the tombs of the prophets, and you say, ‘If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have partaken in the blood of the prophets.’ By saying this, you show that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.” (Mt 23:29-31). By saying they would not have killed the prophets, these scribes and pharisees showed how they were like their fathers who killed the prophets. They were like their fathers who killed the prophets, in that they wanted to see themselves as people who would not kill prophets, in that they wanted to see themselves as people who were good. It was the desire to believe that they were good, that had led their fathers to kill the prophets; because the prophets had shown their fathers that they were not good. It was the desire to believe they were good, that led these scribes and pharisees to partake in the blood of the greatest prophet; because the greatest prophet showed them they were not good. And it is the desire to believe that we are good, that leads all of us to our greatest acts of evil, and that would probably lead all of us to reject Jesus as these scribes and pharisees of Jerusalem rejected Jesus, if Jesus were to come to us as He came to them. All people who try to convince themselves they are good will reject Jesus, And all people who try to convince themselves they are good would help kill Jesus, as these scribes and pharisees helped kill Jesus, if they were put in the same situation as these scribes and pharisees . Every one of us would probably partake in Jesus’ blood if we were put in their circumstances, because every one of us wants to believe that he or she is good. Only people who are able to deny themselves will be able to resist this desire. Jesus says, “If any one will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily.” (Lk 9:23 & Mt 16:24), and Jesus says, “If any man does not hate his life, he cannot follow me” (Lk 14:26-33).
Jesus told these scribes and pharisees about great evils they had committed, and these scribes and pharisees didn’t want to hear Jesus. If Jesus came today and told us about great evils we have committed, we wouldn’t want to hear Jesus either.
We know that the Jewish people had been chosen as the people best suited to hear Jesus’ teachings first and to then pass those teachings on to the rest of us, because Jesus says I am sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Mt 15:29), and when He also says, “I came that I might save the world.” (Jn12:47). If Jesus had been sent to another people we know this would have given all of us less chance of being able to follow Jesus. If Jesus had been sent to another people He probably still would have been killed, but then would have also have been forgotten. As it is Jesus was not forgotten because many Jewish people kept his words alive, and passed his words on to the rest of us. If this had not happened, most of us would never even have heard of Jesus.
We know that we all hate Jesus because Jesus says to us, “The World hates me because I testify that its works are evil.” (Jn 7:6-8)., and because He says, “The light has come into the world, and men loved darkness, rather than light, because their works were evil.” (Jn 3:19-21),
Jesus tells us again of our weakness when He says to His Disciples, “Pray that you know no temptation. Indeed the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Mt 26:41 & LK 22:46). Jesus is telling His Disciples that even when they want to do good, if they are tempted they will do evil. When Jesus tells us to pray to Our Heavenly Father, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (Mt 6:5-15 & Lk 11:2-4). Jesus is telling us to pray that we be delivered from the evil we would do if we were led into temptation. It is this evil we truly need to be delivered from. Evil that is done to us does us little harm, compared to evil we do; which does us great harm. When we do evil, we harden our hearts against the victims of our evil, and against all people we might want to do evil to in the future. By doing this we make it harder for ourselves to forgive other people when they do evil to us, and by doing this we make ourselves less likely to receive Our Creator’s forgiveness. Not receiving Our Creator’s forgiveness would do far greater harm to us than any evil other people could ever do. Jesus tells us all to expect to do evil, and to plan on doing evil, when He says, “Use unrighteous mammon to make friends, so that when it fails, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.” (Luke 16:9). Jesus is telling us that we will try to live by unrighteous mammon, that when we try to live by unrighteous mammon, unrighteous mammon will fail us, and that we will only be received into everlasting habitations if we have used the fruits of our unrighteousness to make other people our friends; If, instead of trying to avoid other people because we fear their evil would corrupt our goodness, we see that we are evil, as they are evil, and we befriend them because their evil, like our evil, causes them to need help, as we need help. Jesus tells us that we all do evil we will want to pretend we have not done when He says, “The light has come into the world, and men loved darkness, rather than light, because their works were evil. Everyone who does evil, hates the light, and stays away from the light for fear his works will be reproved” (Jn 3:19-21), and when he says, “The World hates me because I testify that its works are evil” (Jn 7:2-8), and Jesus tells us that to follow Him we will have to overcome the desire to believe we are good that leads us to want to pretend we are less evil than we are, but will instead have to admit that we all do many things Our Creator hates, when He says, “If any man does not hate his life, he cannot follow me” (Lk 14:26-33). And Jesus tells us that we will have to deny our desire to do evil every day, when He says, “If any one will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily.” (Lk 9:23 & Mt 16:24).
Because all organizations have been created by people, and because we know that all people are often evil, we also know that all organizations have great evil in them, and these are the reasons that all people must repent and must try to reform themselves, and must try to reform all organizations they are a part of, in order to receive Our Creator’s forgiveness. (including all churches that call themselves Christian churches).
Our Creator wants evil to continue until it is transformed into good. Our Creator gave each of us life, and Our Creator continuously chooses to sustain our lives. And because Jesus teaches that all of us, are evil, we know that this means that Our Creator wants evil to continue in our world. Our Creator wants each of us to be alive, and who are we to question Our Creator. Though we seldom do Our Creator’s will, Our Creator never wants us to doubt that we should go forward with our lives. We must go forward with our lives, in order to transform ourselves into what Our Creator wants us to be. If we stop going forward: if we give up on our lives (if we give up on our selves) then we will never become what Our Creator wants us to be. Even if we never do become what Our Creator wants us to be, by going forward we might help someone else become what Our Creator wants him or her to be. It is true that if we fail to become what Our Creator wants us to be, we will pay the consequences for this failure, but if we give up on our lives (if we give up on our selves), then we will pay consequences that are even more painful than the consequences of failure.
Our Creator does not want a world that is free of evil. If Our Creator wanted such a world, then Our Creator would not have given us free will. Instead Our Creator wants a world in which evil continues until it is transformed into good. If evil is killed, then that evil can never become good, and if all evil were killed then there would be no good. There would then be nothing. Good must come from evil that has been transformed. Good is transformed evil. Our world is an oven in which ingredients that are not good in themselves (our individual selves) are combined (baked) into something that is good: Our greater self in which each of us is a part of a larger whole. There may be macro certainty in this process: (Our Creator may know that something good will come of it), but there is no micro certainty in this process (no individual person knows whether or not he or she will become a part of the good thing that is being created. Our evil may hold us back from doing this.) If we join with other people in becoming something greater than ourselves, then we will know great joy. Our evil may keep each of us from doing this though.
I have wanted to kill evil when I have seen it, instead of wanting to transform evil that I have seen, into good. Because of this I have wanted to kill myself.
Good can only come from evil. Good is transformed evil. If there were no evil, then there could be no good. All that is good was once evil. Evil is a stage we all must pass through. It is the infant that can grow into good. As a stage evil is natural and there is nothing wrong with it. Evil only becomes evil when it continues beyond its proper time: when it does not transform itself into good. We all begin our lives as beings who pursue only self-interest, and who live in competition with other people. In this stage we see our world in terms of conflict, and we seek out conflict. We believe that we can only get what we want if we keep other people from getting what they want. We think that for us to win everyone else must lose. This is simply how we are when we start our lives. There is nothing good or bad about this. It just is.
The only way in which we can eliminate all the evil that is in us, at once is by killing ourselves. If we go on with our lives, then we will do great evil. The best that we can hope to do is to transform parts of ourselves from evil into good, while as a whole we continue to do great amounts of evil. We cannot immediately become good. Becoming good is a long process and it will take a long time. If we want to kill evil when we see it, then we will want to kill ourselves, and then we will not be able to continue to try to become good for anywhere close to long enough for us to actually become good. There are two ways in which a person who feels like this will stop trying to be good. The first way is by simply ending his or her life. The second, and much more common, way is by telling him or herself that he or she already is good. While less dramatic, this way of giving up on the attempt to become good is just as destructive to a person who gives in to it, and is much more destructive to other people. This is so because only people who think that they are good can commit great acts of evil.
It takes courage for a person to admit, that he or she is evil and needs Our Creator’s mercy. This is so because all people fear that Our Creator will show them justice, instead of mercy. A person who thinks that he or she is good, will think that Our Creator owes him or her good things, in return for his or her goodness. Such a person will feel as if he or she has an account full of money in Our Creator’s bank. If a person comes to see that he or she is not good, and that Our Creator owes him or her only punishment, then that person will go from feeling as if he or she has an account full of money in Our Creator’s bank, to realizing that he or she has nothing in Our Creator’s bank, but instead owes Our Creator a great debt, which he or she will only be forgiven If Our Creator shows mercy that he or she doesn’t deserve.
Jesus tells of a man who tried to hold on to what he thought he had, because he did not have enough courage to admit that even that which he seemed to have, was only something that he had on loan from Our Creator. Jesus tells us of this man, when He says, “The kingdom of God is like a Lord, who before going on a journey loaned money to a number of different slaves. One slave hid the money that his lord had loaned him, rather than risking this money to get more money. While other slaves risked the money that they had been loaned, and by risking this money, got more money. When their Lord returned from His journey, the slaves who had risked the money they had been given to get more money, paid their lord more than he had given them. The Lord then loaned these slaves more money than He had loaned them before. The slave, who had hidden what he had been loaned, returned that money saying, “Here is what is yours. When his Lord asked him why he had not used this money to get more money, this man said, “I was afraid. I know you are a hard man: who reaps where he did not sow, and who gathers where he did not scatter.” his Lord then said, “You wicked and slothful slave, if you knew that I reap where I sowed not, and gather whence I have not scattered, then you should have made some money for me. The money that you had will be taken from you, and will be given to the slave who now has the most: For to every one who has, more will be given, but from him who has not, even that which he seems to have, will be taken away.” And the unprofitable slave was cast into the outer darkness: there will be great wailing and gnashing of teeth.” (Mt 25:14-30 & Lk 19:12-27)
What Our Creator gives us is an investment, and Our Creator expects that investment to pay something back to Him. People who use what Our Creator has given them to create something for Our Creator, will get more from Our Creator, But people, who do not have the courage to risk what Our Creator has given them, will not create anything for Our Creator, and will lose even what they seem to have.
The way Jesus tells us to live is the way Our Creator wants us to live, and healing our world and our lives, is only one of the ways Our Creator will reward us for living in this way. Some people say that Our Creator doesn’t care how we live, or say that we have no Creator. The second of these statements is nonsense because if we exist, then we either have been created or are still being created, and we must have a Creator. If we became the way we are physically, through the process of evolution, then evolution simply describes part of how have been created. And the statement that Our Creator doesn’t care how we live, is based on a belief that is not supported by what we see of our world. Any time we see actions that always produce certain results, we are seeing a part of what Our Creator wants for our world. And though it is only easy for us to see which actions lead to which results in the physical sciences, this does not mean that the relationship between actions and consequences is more uncertain with regard to human affairs, but only means that it is harder for us to see which actions lead to which results in human affairs. The thing that makes it hardest for us to see which human actions will lead to results we desire, is that we all seldom do the things that would create the world we want to live in, and for this reason we can seldom see the results of these actions. Until we try to live as Jesus tells us to live, this will not change.
There are also many ways in which Our Creator is not like any person. Jesus teaches that we should never try to put ourselves in Our Creator’s place, and that we should never try to act like Our Creator, when He says to His disciples, “Be not you called Rabbi, for Christ is your master and you are all brothers. And call no man father, for you have a Father who is in heaven. Neither be you called master, for Christ is your master.” (Mt 23: 5-12 & Lk 20: 45-47) The most important way in which Our Creator is unlike all people, is that Our Creator created us, and that no person can create another person. We carry materials Our Creator has created, and we put those materials together so that Our Creator can create new people, and we sometimes try to blasphemously imagine that we are Creators. To try to say that we create when we do this, is like trying to say that a gardener creates a plant when He puts a seed in the ground.
Sometimes Jesus calls Our Creator, Lord, and sometimes Jesus calls Our Creator, God, but most of the time Jesus calls Our Creator, ‘Father’. Jesus does this to help us understand our obligation to our Creator, and to remind us of ways in which Our Creator is like a human father. One way in which Our Creator is like a human father is that Our Creator gives to us, as a human father sometimes gives to his children. Our Creator’s gifts, though, are infinitely more valuable than the gifts that any human father gives. Another way in which Our Creator is like a human father, is that, through Jesus, Our Creator tells us what we should do, as human fathers often try to tell us what we should do. Our Creator always tells us what we truly should do, though, while human fathers often tell us that we should do things that we should not do. And a third way in which Our Creator is like a human father, is that Our Creator is in many ways distant from us, and is in many ways unknowable to us, just as human fathers are often distant from their children, and are in many ways unknowable to their children.
When Jesus calls Our Creator, ‘Father’, Jesus is not saying that Our Creator is more like a man, than like a woman. Jesus is instead, saying that human fathers try to act like Our Creator, more often than human mothers try to act like Our Creator. While human mother’s usually give at least as much to their children as human fathers do, human mothers usually do not try to tell their children what they should do, as often as human fathers do, and human mothers usually are not as distant from their children, as human father’s are. Jesus wants us to understand Our Creator as fully as we can, because the better we understand Our Creator, the more likely we will be to do what Our Creator wants us to do, and to receive the rewards Our Creator will give to people who do what He wants us to do.
Jesus also is not saying that Our Creator is more like a man than like a woman, by having chosen to come to earth as a man. Jesus simply made this choice because this was the best way for him to be listened to by the greatest number of people. Other than being a man, we do not know what Jesus looked like. All pictures that we have of Jesus are only guesses. Both Jesus and our Creator can choose to appear in different ways to different people.
People who claim that the desire to criminalize abortion, is a desire motivated by Christian values, do not understand Jesus. While these people may correctly see that Jesus goes even further than telling us not to kill, when He says to us, “You have heard it said that whoever kills shall be liable to judgement, but I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgement, and that whoever says ‘You fool’ to his brother shall be liable to hell fire.” (Mt 5:21-24), these people do not understand that Jesus commanded us not to engage in any forms of coercion, and that making any activity a criminal activity, or being a part of any system that forces any person to submit to criminal penalties, is a form of coercion. Even If a person does evil to us, Jesus commands us not to use any form of coercion against that person. One time that Jesus does this, is when He says, “Do not resist evil. If a man strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him your left. If a man judges you and takes away your coat, offer him your cloak also. If a man compels you to go a mile, go with him two.” (Mt 5:38-41). Jesus tells us what we are allowed to do, to try to stop people from trespassing against us, when He says, “If your brother trespasses against you, first tell him his fault in private. If he will not hear you, then go to him again and bring some witnesses with you. If he still will not hear you, then tell it to the church. If he will not hear the church, then let him be as a stranger to you.” (Mt 18:15-17). If doing these things does not lead our brother to stop trespassing against us, then we are to let our brother be as a stranger to us, rather than trying to force him to stop trespassing against us.
For almost all of human history, we have told ourselves that if we did not resist evil, then we, and people we are close to, would suffer greater grief and privation, than we, and people we are close to, would suffer if we did resist evil. Jesus knows that the opposite of this is true, and this is why He gives us these commands.
The attempt to criminalize abortion, also helps us to see at least one other reason that Jesus tells us to avoid coercion, even if evil is being done to us. This reason is that all forms of coercion, (including taking part in any system that uses criminal penalties), will do very little to lessen the number of times that people engage in any activity. If any of us has a strong desire to do a thing, then we will do that thing, whether or not that thing is a criminal activity. In addition, criminalizing any activity will make some people more likely to engage in that activity, because none of us, likes to be told what to do, and some of us will be more likely to do any particular thing, if we are told not to do that thing.
It is just as true of abortion, as it is of any other activity, that criminalizing abortion, will do very little to decrease the number of abortions that people engage in. The only thing that will significantly decrease the number of abortions that people engage in, is for those people not to have to face the difficult circumstances that often make abortion, seem like the best option available to them. No one wants to have an abortion, and if difficult circumstances that many people face were alleviated, then very few abortions would occur. Usually these circumstances are economic circumstances, and usually people who want to criminalize abortion, are nowhere near being the people who try to do the most to alleviate these economic circumstances. Often these people know that doing this is the only thing that would lead to a significant decline in the number of abortions, and often they are cynically claiming that they want to reduce abortions, while they refuse to do the things that they know would lead to a significant reduction in abortions. Often the true reason that such people want to criminalize abortion, is that they want to punish anyone who might have sex when they do not want those people to have sex. Often, though, people who want to criminalize abortion, simply do not understand how little criminalizing abortion would do to lessen abortions, and do not understand how much more easily we could do the things that would lead to a significant decline in the number of abortions.
In this area, as in all areas, whether or not any person, should do a particular thing, is something that we should try not to think about. Jesus tells us this when He says, “Judge not, lest you be judged. For with whatever judgement you judge, you shall be judged.” (Mt 7:1-2, & Lk 6:37). Jesus tells us that our focus should be on our own actions when He says to His disciple Peter, when Peter complained about another disciple, “If I will that he tarry till I come again, what is that to you. You follow me.” (Jn 21:22). We can help other people by reminding them of what Jesus told us all, but we must always remember that none of us is able to do all that Jesus tells us to do, and that we are never in a position that would allow us to judge whether or not any person should be able to follow Jesus, at any particular time. Only our Creator can make this Judgement. Even Jesus would not judge while He was on earth, but Jesus tells us that, “There is one who judges.” (Jn 8:50)
People who try to prevent abortion by trying to give economic aid to pregnant women who they did not know before their pregnancies, can do more to reduce the number of abortions, than people who try to criminalize abortions, can do, but can still do little to reduce abortions. This is so because most women who are pregnant will rightly feel insulted by the fact that someone is trying to help them now that they are pregnant, who did nothing to try to help them before they were pregnant, because this tells them that a person doing this thinks they are worthy of help now, but were unworthy of help before. For this reason many pregnant women, will never even take the first steps to learn about programs that offer them financial aid once they are pregnant, but that were not available to them before they were pregnant. The women who do take steps to learn about this aid, usually accept the judgement that being pregnant makes them better people who are more worthy of aid, and this attitude is often a big part of why many of these women got pregnant while in difficult circumstances, in the first place.
If any person did not try to help a woman before she was pregnant, then that person can do little to influence whether or not that woman will have an abortion. The only way to significantly reduce abortions, is to make economic circumstances better for pregnant women, and for people who had helped these women, or had tried to help these women, before they were pregnant.
If we do not follow Jesus’ command not to judge (Mt 7:1-2, & Lk 6:37), then we will inevitably judge ourselves to be better than most other people, in whatever ways we consider most important. And to reinforce our belief that we are better than those people in those ways, we will then try to force those people to be like us in those ways. Whenever two or more people are alike in too many ways, then either only one of those people is thinking about what he or she does, or what is more likely, is that none of those people are thinking about what they do. If we think about what we do, then we will be alike in some ways but we also be different in many ways, and those differences will allow us to work together more effectively with each other, and to live in greater harmony with each other, because we all know that thinking about what we do, and acting on the basis of decisions we make, is the core of human dignity, and because if we are not doing this we will be angry toward every one and everything we see, and we will be most angry toward any person who reminds us that we have lost the dignity that all humans should possess. And we will be reminded of this most by anyone who acts differently than we do. This is why we are most brutal, vicious, and terrifying to other people, when we try to force those people not to think for themselves, but to instead act without thinking, whenever we act without thinking. If we do not consciously pledge ourselves not to judge, then judging will dominate our lives and we will become people who cannot think clearly, and who are terrors to anyone who tries to think at all. Sadly this is what has happened to most of us. Because we do not believe we are free to think for ourselves, we will not let anyone else think for him or herself. If we try as hard as we can, not to judge, though, then we can recover from this state.
Section 3.)
We all do very little good by Our Creator’s standards, and any difference in the amount of good different people do, is small and means little to Our Creator. Jesus tells us this when He tells us of a pharisee and a publican who both went to a temple to pray. “The Pharisee stood, and silently prayed, ‘God, thank you that I am not as other men are: rapacious, unjust, adulterers, or even as this Publican. I fast twice a week, and give tithes of all I posses.’ The Publican stood, in the back of the temple, beat on his chest, and would not even look up, as he said, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner.’ “I tell you”, said Jesus, “This man went to his house justified, rather than the other. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” (Lk 18:10-14).
By human standards this Pharisee had avoided great evil this publican had done, and had done good this publican had not done. To Our creator, though, these differences were small and meant little. What mattered to Our Creator was that this publican had humbly begged for forgiveness, and that this Pharisee had not.
Though this Pharisee may have been rapacious and unjust, in spite of his claim that he was not, This Pharisee had avoided doing evil this Publican had done, because a Publican was a worker for a foreign government that had stolen the land of Israel. (A Publican was a worker for the Roman empire). So a Publican, like many government workers, was a thief.
By refraining from adultery this Pharisee had also avoided at least one other evil act he had seen men perform. And this Pharisee had probably done some good when he gave tithes. As a priest of Jesus’ church, this Pharisee had also started to do good when he preached the law of the prophets, but negated this good by refusing to try to live by that law. All of this, though, did not justify this Pharisee before our Creator. This publican, on the other hand, was justified, in spite of taking part in the theft of a nation, because a person who believes that he or she is a sinner who needs to beg for Our Creator’s forgiveness, will forgive people who trespass against him or her, as often as he or she is able to, in order to receive Our Creator’s forgiveness, and because everything Jesus tells us to do for other people is a part of forgiving people who trespass against us. “If you forgive men their trespasses, then your Father will also forgive you.” (Mt 6:9-15)
Any morality based on the belief that we are good will crumble and fall like a house built on shifting sands. Only a morality based on the belief that we are all evil, will last. This morality will be like a house that is built on solid rock. Many people try to convince themselves that other people are good when they want to treat those people well and try to convince themselves that other people are evil when they want to treat those people badly. Doing this only leads these people to be even more cruel and vicious to other people when they go from believing those people are good to believing those people are evil. The truth is that we are all good in some ways and are all evil in other ways, and because of this it is easy for us to believe whatever we want to believe about each other. We will only receive Our Creator’s forgiveness if we try as hard as we can not to judge any people, but try instead to treat all people well, and when other people trespass against us, try to show those people mercy, so Our Creator will show us mercy.
Of Course we will also want other people not to trespass against us, but if we live as Jesus teaches us to live, other people will not be able to do much harm to us compared to the good Our Creator will do to us, while if we try to stop evil by fighting with other people, we will not receive Our Creator’s forgiveness, and we will increase the amount of evil other people will try to do to us and will be able to do to us. The way in which we can do the most to stop other people from doing evil to us is by explaining to those people that they need Our Creator’s forgiveness as much as we need Our Creator’s forgiveness, and that they, like us, will only receive this forgiveness if they try as hard as they can to forgive other people, even if they think those people have trespassed against them. Jesus tells us to do this, and to do no more than this, when other people trespass against us, when He says, “If your brother trespasses against you, first tell him his fault in private. If he will not hear you, then go to him again and bring some witnesses with you. If he still will not hear you, then tell it to the church. If he will not hear the church, then let him be as a stranger to you.” (Mt 18:15-17). This tells us that if we cannot persuade our brother to stop trespassing against us, we are to let him be as a stranger to us rather than trying to force him to stop trespassing against us.
When this does not stop other people from doing evil to us, we must remember that resisting evil would hurt us far more than other people can hurt us, and we must remember that Jesus says, “Blessed are you when men will hate you, and when they will separate you from their company, and will reproach you, and cast out your name as evil for the son of man’s sake. Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy: for behold your reward is great in heaven, for their fathers did likewise to the prophets.” (Lk 6:22-23) Most of the time we will all hate people who try to follow Jesus, because when people try to follow Jesus, they will try to forgive as they need be forgiven, and because if they forgive as they need be forgiven, then it will be harder for us to hate as we want to hate. It is easiest for any person to hate when people around that person join in his or her hatred. People who try to follow Jesus are unreliable haters. At any moment they may let us down by renouncing a hatred we want them to join us in. Jesus not only tells to rejoice when other people hate us and treat us badly, but Jesus also tells us to mourn when other people treat us well, when he says, “woe to you who are rich, for you have received your comfort. Woe to you who have been filled, for you will hunger. Woe to you who laugh now, because you will mourn and lament. Woe to you when all men shall speak well of you, for your fathers spoke well of the false prophets. (Lk 6:20-26).
Judge Not
In order not to judge, we must assume that if we were placed in another person’s circumstances, we would do the same evil that person does, and that if another person were placed in our circumstances, that person would do the same evil we do, we must never believe that another person does more evil than we do, (only that another person does different evil than we do), we must accept that we cannot know whether or not Our Creator will forgive any person for evil that he or she does, we must remember that our judgements about good and evil will often be wrong, and we must never try to make any judgements about what is in a person’s heart. Jesus tells us not to try to judge what is in a person’s heart when He says to us, “If your brother trespasses against you, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him; even if He trespasses and repents seven times in a day.” (Lk 17:3-4). If our brother trespasses against us and repents seven times in a day, we will probably believe that our brother is not being honest when he repents. This doesn’t matter to Jesus, though. We are to forgive our brother whether he is honest or dishonest with us. Our Creator can judge our hearts and our brother’s hearts, and Our Creator will only forgive people who sincerely repent. We cannot judge each other’s hearts, though, and we are to forgive all people; whether or not they repent, and whether or not their repentance is sincere. Only people who truly repent, will forgive people who do evil to them, as we all need Our Creator to forgive us for evil we do to Him, and because of this, only people who truly repent will receive Our Creator’s forgiveness. Jesus tells us often, that we must repent. (Mt 4:17, Mt 9:13, Lk 5:32, & Lk 13:1-5). Our Creator will judge whether a person has repented or not, just as Our Creator will judge whether or not any person has forgiven people who have done evil to him or her, often enough to receive His forgiveness. We cannot make these judgements, and Jesus tells us not to try. In order not to judge we must also assume that all groups of people would do as much good and as much evil as all other groups of people, if they were placed in the same circumstances as each other. On average the group of us who call ourselves Christians have been placed in circumstances that have given us more power than people from other groups have been given. For this reason those of us who call ourselves Christians have done both more evil and more good than other groups of people have done. We have both caused more wars, violence and killing than most other groups of people, and we have given more to the poor than most other groups of people.
People who say, ‘no peace without justice.’ Are making an accurate statement of fact. Peace will not exist without justice, because even when we try to follow Jesus, if evil is done to us we will all usually resist that evil. But this fact does absolutely nothing to make resisting evil, any less foolish for us, because if we resist evil when Our Creator expects us to be able to follow Jesus, and expects us not to resist evil, then doing this will cause us not to receive Our Creator’s forgiveness. Peace will often not exist with justice either. Justice is one of the conditions necessary for peace, but it is not sufficient to bring about peace.
If two people do equal evil, and if Our Creator expected equal amounts of good from these two people, then if one of those people did that evil as a part of resisting evil done to him or her, and the other person initiated the evil that was resisted, then If Our Creator shows those people justice instead of mercy, Our Creator will judge the person who initiated evil more harshly than the person who resisted evil.
This does not make us any less foolish when we resist evil, though. As Jesus says to us, “Judge not”, and as Jesus said to Peter when Peter objected to Jesus’ allowing another disciple to go unpunished after doing evil to Jesus, “If I will that he tarry till I come again, what is that to you. You follow me.” (Jn 21:20-22). Jesus knows that judging people will make us want to do justice to those people, and will often lead us not to receive Our Creator’s forgiveness, so He teaches us how we can live as Our Creator wants us to live even when other people do evil to us, by teaching us not to judge. When people who say “no peace without justice”, mean that we should willingly fight if injustice is done to us, those people are counseling foolishness. This is how most people have lived throughout history and throughout history most people have convinced themselves that fighting they wanted to engage in would lead to justice. We know that we will usually fight if injustice is done to us, but if we are wise we will always try as hard as we can not to fight, regardless of what other people do to us.
Revenge has never helped anyone, and justice is just a word that we use when we don’t want to say revenge. The word justice implies that the person we are seeking vengeance on actually did what we believe that person did. But this does absolutely nothing to make the vengeance that we seek, help us. Even if we are correct in what we believe about any person, seeking vengeance on that person will do us great harm. Jesus tells us what will happen to us, if we seek vengeance on any person, when He says, “If you do not forgive men their trespasses against you, then neither will your father forgive your trespasses.” (Mt 6:9-15, see also Mt 18:23-35, and Lk 6:37). And Jesus tells us not to judge, because each of us will, “Be judged by the judgement you judge by”, (Mt 7:1-2).
Sadly, though, instead of using things that people have made as tools to help us get things Our Creator has made, we often try to get things people have made instead of trying to get things Our Creator has made. Jesus tells us often of the danger of doing this. One time Jesus tells us of this danger is when He says His closest disciple, Peter, “Get behind me Satan. You are an offence to me because you do not think of things of God, but think instead, of things of men.” (Mt 16:23). Jesus tells us of this danger again when, in the parable of the sower, He says, “And some seed fell among thorns and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it.” and when He then explains this parable, saying, “In this parable The seed is the word of God, and those seeds that fell among thorns are people who, when they have heard the word, go forth and are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of this life.” (Lk 8:4-15) “The one who receives the seed among thorns is one who hears the word, and the anxiety of the age, and the deceit of riches chokes the word, and it becomes unfruitful. (Mt 13:18-23), and tells us of this danger again when He tells us of a man, who had gathered great worldly wealth, and who enjoyed thinking about the things he had. “’You fool’, said God to this man, ‘tonight your soul will be required of you, then whose will those things be.’ So it is with anyone, who lays up treasure for himself, but is not rich toward heaven” (Lk 12:15-21), when He says, “Do not lay up treasure on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves dig through and steal. Instead, lay up treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not dig through and steal.” (Mt 6:19-23 & Lk 12:33), and when He says we should not try to receive rewards from people, because if we receive rewards from people, then we will not receive rewards from God. Jesus tells us this when He says, “Don’t be like hypocrites, who sound a trumpet before them that they might have the glory of men. I tell you they have their reward. Instead, do your alms in secret, so that your father, who sees you secretly, will reward you.” (Mt 6:1-4).
Though Jesus tells us to think of things Our Creator has made, instead of thinking of things people have made, Jesus also tells us to understand both things Our Creator has made, and things people have made, when He says to His disciples, “I send you forth as sheep among wolves. Therefore be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves.” (Mt 10:16)
Section 4.)
The greatest error we can make (the error that will do the most to hurt us) is to try to convince ourselves that we are good.
Jesus tells us of the dangers of trying to convince ourselves that we are good, when he says to the scribes and pharisees of Jerusalem, “You decorate the tombs of the prophets, and you say, ‘If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have partaken in the blood of the prophets.’ By saying this, you show that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.” (Mt 23:29-31). By saying they would not have killed the prophets, these scribes and pharisees showed how they were like their fathers who killed the prophets. They were like their fathers who killed the prophets, in that they wanted to see themselves as people who would not kill prophets, in that they wanted to see themselves as people who were good. It was the desire to believe that they were good, that had led their fathers to kill the prophets; because the prophets had shown their fathers that they were not good. It was the desire to believe they were good, that led these scribes and pharisees to partake in the blood of the greatest prophet; because the greatest prophet showed them they were not good. And it is the desire to believe that we are good, that leads all of us to our greatest acts of evil, and that would probably lead all of us to reject Jesus as these scribes and pharisees rejected Jesus, if Jesus were to come to us as He came to them. All people who try to convince themselves they are good will reject Jesus, And all people who try to convince themselves they are good would help kill Jesus, as these scribes and pharisees helped kill Jesus, if they were put in the same situation as these scribes and pharisees . Every one of us would probably partake in Jesus’ blood if we were put in their circumstances, because every one of us wants to believe that he or she is good. Only people who are able to deny themselves will be able to resist this desire. Jesus says, “If any one will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily.” (Lk 9:23 & Mt 16:24), and Jesus says, “If any man does not hate his life, he cannot follow me” (Lk 14:26-33).
Jesus told these scribes and pharisees about great evils they had committed, and these scribes and pharisees didn’t want to hear Jesus. If Jesus came today and told us about great evils we have committed, we wouldn’t want to hear Jesus either.
Trying to convince ourselves we are good, will do more to cause us to lose Our Creator’s favor than any other action we can take. We are not good. The reason we are not good is that most of the time we do not do what we should do: most of the time we do not do what is right for us to do: most of the time we do not do what Our Creator wants us to do. This is not something we can avoid or change. We should always try to do what is right for us to do, but we must accept that we will often fail, and that we will often do what we should not do. Though we usually cannot do what we should do, we can stop trying to convince ourselves that we are good.
If Jesus comes again while we are alive, and if any of us does not help to kill Him, we will only do so if Our Creator leads us away from temptation, or if Our Creator gives us the strength we will need to resist temptation. In either case, if we refrain from doing evil, we will do so, not because we are good, but because Our Creator is good.
Jesus tells us that our ability to do Our Creator’s will depends on whether or not we are led into temptation, when He tells us to pray, ”Lord, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (Mt 6:5-15 & Lk 11:2-4). Jesus is telling us to pray that we be delivered from the evil we would do, if we were led into temptation.
Jesus tells us we will only be able to forgive people who trespass against us, if Our Creator gives us the strength and the knowledge we will need to have to be able to do Our Creator’s will, and if Our Creator gives us the good fortune to avoid temptation. Jesus tells us this when He says, “Whoever has been given much, much will be demanded of him.” (Lk 12:48). By saying this, Jesus tells us that Our Creator expects people, who have been given more, to do more of what He wants them to do. Jesus tells us again that Our Creator expects people who have been given more, to do more of His will, when He says to the people of Chorazin and Bethsaida, “Woe to You Chorazin and Bethsaida. If the mighty works that have been done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, Tyre and Sidon would have repented long ago. It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you at the judgement: and also for Capernaum.” (Lk 10:10-16). The people of Chorazin and Bethsaida had been given the gift of hearing Jesus speak and of watching Jesus work. The more any person is able to learn from Jesus, the more Our Creator expects of that person. Jesus tells us that people who have been given more will be able to do more of Our Creator’s will when He says, “Whoever has, more will be given to him; and whoever has not, even what he seems to have, will be taken away from him.” (Lk 8:18, Lk 19:26, Mt 13:12 & Mt 25:29). This will be so because only people who have been given the ability to do what Our Creator wants them to do, and who have been led away from temptation, will be able to forgive people who trespass against them, and because only people who forgive people who trespass against them, will receive rewards that Our Creator will give to people who do what He wants us to do. Though our Creator demands more forgiveness from people who have been given more, Our Creator demands that we all forgive people who trespass against us, as often as we should be able to based on how much wisdom and strength we have been given. If any of us does not do what Our Creator demands of us, then anything that person does have will be of no use to that person and will soon be taken away. Such people only seem to have things they will soon lose.
The Good News Jesus brings to our world is the news that we do not need to be good to win Our Creator’s favor. Jesus teaches that instead of being good, what we need to do to win Our Creator’s favor is to forgive other people for evil they do to us, as we need Our Creator to forgive us for evil we do to him.
Because Jesus knows that we cannot be good, He does not tell us to be good. Instead, Jesus tells us to see our evil, and to renounce our evil.
“If any man does not hate his life, he cannot follow me” (Lk 14:26-33).
“If any one will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily.” (Lk 9:23 & Mt 16:24)
We will have to deny ourselves every day of our lives. We will never want to be good. We will never want to do what God wants us to do. We will always fear and hate our brothers and sisters. And we will never want to forgive our brothers and sisters. This hate will always be in us. Our only path to God’s favor is to see this hate, and to deny this hate, Every day.
We can never win God’s favor by doing what we want to do. We can only win God’s favor by taking Jesus’ yoke. A yoke is a wooden collar that binds two oxen together at their necks, and that keeps those oxen from leaving a farmer who is making them plow his field. Just as an ox will often wish to be free of a farmer’s yoke, we will often wish to be free of Jesus’ yoke. Jesus tells us, though, that “My yoke is easy, and my burden light” (Mt 11:30).
When compared to the burden we would have to carry if we did what we want to do, Jesus’ yoke is very easy, and His burden very light.
Jesus tells us that, “Everyone who sins is a slave of sin” (Jn 08:34). If we do what we want to do, we will serve the harsh master of sin, rather than the gentle master that is Jesus.
Even Jesus had to deny what He wanted to do, in order to do what God wanted Him to do. Because of this, Jesus shows us the perfect example of how to deny ourselves. When Jesus was coming close to His crucifixion, He prayed to God, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will but as You will.” (Mt 26:39, 42 & 44 & Lk 22:42).
Jesus did not want to die on the cross, but He did die on the cross, because God wanted him to.
If a person wanted to do everything that God wanted that person to do, then that person would be good, and then that person would not have to deny him or herself. This will never be though. Any person who tries to make him or herself want to do, what God wants him or her to do: That person will instead, make him or herself believe that what God wants him or her to do, is the same as what he or she wants to do.
Such a person will not do God’s will, but will instead do his or her own will.
Seeing our evil lets us see the good that God wants us to do.
When we want to believe we are good we tell ourselves that Jesus told us to do much less than he actually told us to do and we substitute things that are easier for us to do for the difficult things He actually told us to do. We will only understand Jesus’ true teachings’ when we admit how poorly we follow those teachings.
If we want Our Creator to let us keep stealing from Him, we must encourage people who steal from us, to steal more from us.
We steal from Our Creator every time we use abilities Our Creator has given us in ways Our Creator does not want us to use those abilities. We steal from Our Creator every day, and on the next day we always ask Our Creator to give us more of what we have stolen from Him. Jesus shows us that we ask Our Creator to give us all that we have, when He tells us to pray to God, “Give us this day our daily bread.” (Mt 6:5-15 & Lk 11:2-4). Our Creator gives us our daily bread to sustain our lives so we can use those lives to do His will. When we do not use our lives to do Our Creator’s will, then we are stealing from Our Creator.
Jesus says to us, “If a man wishes to judge you and to take away your coat, offer him your cloak also.” (Mt 5:39-48 & Lk 6:27-38). Our Creator will only keep giving us our daily bread after we steal from Him, if we give people who have stolen from us more of whatever they have stolen from us: If we say to a man who steals our coat, “please, take my cloak also.” If we want Our Creator to forgive us for stealing from Him, then we must forgive people who steal from us. If we want Our Creator to keep giving us more of what we have stolen from Him, then we must give other people more of whatever they may steal from us. If we do not do this, then the day will come when Our Creator will stop letting us steal from Him. On that day we will have nothing.
We strike Our Creator on the right cheek every time we use what Our Creator has given us to do things Our Creator doesn’t want us to do, and we hope Our Creator will turn His left cheek to us, rather than striking us in return. Our Creator will only do this, if we do likewise and turn our left cheek to anyone who strikes us on the right, rather than striking that person in return. (Mt 5:39-48 & Lk 6:27-38). If we do not turn our left cheeks to anyone who strikes us on the right, then Our Creator will resist our evil, as we resist evil from other people. If this happens, Our Creator will then show us justice instead of mercy, and in His justice Our Creator will punish us long and hard, for as our evil is great, so also will our punishment also be great.
Jesus tells us that we are totally dependent on Our Creator when He tells us to pray to Our Father, “give us this day our daily bread” , and when He tells us to pray to Our Father, “lead us not into evil but deliver us from temptation.” (both Mt 6_5-15, and Lk 11:2-4). This tells us we are so dependent on Our Creator we cannot live unless Our Creator gives to us every day the food we need to sustain our lives, and this tells us we cannot avoid doing evil, unless Our Creator leads us away from temptation that would cause us to do evil. (Mt 6:5-15 & Lk 11:2-4). It is the evil temptation would lead us to do, that we truly need to be delivered from. Evil that is done to us does us little harm, compared to evil we do; which does us great harm. When we do evil, we harden our hearts against the victims of our evil, and against all people we might want to do evil to in the future. By doing this we make it harder for ourselves to forgive other people when they do evil to us, and we make ourselves less likely to receive Our Creator’s forgiveness. Not receiving Our Creator’s forgiveness would do far greater harm to us than any evil other people could ever do.
If Jesus had only said, “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it”, then we would believe that even a person who did not try to forgive all people who had trespassed against him or her, could ask and receive whatever he or she asks for. We will only understand Jesus if we remember all that He tells us, and we will misunderstand Jesus if we only consider some things He says to us, and ignore other things He says to us. If two different things Jesus says to us seem to contradict each other, then we are misunderstanding either one or both of the statements that seem contradictory to us. If we ignore these truths, then we will profoundly misunderstand Jesus. For example, I once heard a man who called himself a Christian; say that Jesus only tells us to forgive other people if those people repent. This perversion of Jesus’ teaching occurred when this man heard Jesus’ say, “If your brother trespasses against you, rebuke him; and if your brother repents forgive him. Even if he trespasses against you and repents seven times in a day.” And when this man assumed that this is the only time Jesus wants us to forgive people who trespass against us. All we have to do to understand how often Jesus wants us to forgive people who trespass against us is remember that Jesus says, “If you do not forgive men their trespasses, then neither will Your Father forgive you”, and that Jesus says “Forgive if you would be forgiven.” These statements make it clear that we must always try to forgive people who trespass against us, whether they repent or not.
Adding the qualifier ‘only’, to any thing that Jesus says to us, is an attempt to claim that Jesus told us to do less than He actually told us to do. Adding the qualifier “only” to one thing Jesus says to us, and ignoring other things Jesus says to us, will always appeal to us because none of us wants to do any more work than we have to do. If we give in to this desire, though, we will suffer for doing so. The man who only tries to forgive people who repent. This man will not receive Our Father’s forgiveness. In some ways his life will be easier because he will not try to forgive most people who trespass against him. Because Our Creator will not forgive him, though, his life will be infinitely harder, and his suffering infinitely greater, than it would have been if he had considered all that Jesus said.
Jesus says to us, “My yoke is easy, and my burden light” (Mt 11:30). A yoke is a wooden collar that oxen wear around their necks, and that keeps those oxen from leaving a farmer who is making them plow his field. Just as an ox will often wish to be free of a farmer’s yoke, we will often wish to be free of Jesus’ yoke. When compared to the yoke we would have to wear and the burden we would have to carry if we did what we want to do, Jesus’ yoke is very easy, and His burden very light indeed. His yoke is still a yoke though, and his burden still a burden. And we must wear this yoke and carry this burden if we want to receive rewards Jesus tells us of, and avoid punishments Jesus tells us of. Jesus tells us that, “Everyone who sins is a slave of sin” (Jn 08:34). If we do what we want to do, instead of what Jesus wants us to do, we will serve the harsh master of sin, rather than the gentle master that is Jesus.
First pull the beam out of your eye.
Jesus tells us that Our Creator wants all people to forgive people who trespass against them, when He says, “There will be more rejoicing in heaven for one sinner who repents than for ninety nine just men who have no need of repentance.” (Lk 15:7 & Mt 18:12-14 ).
Because we know this, we should feel uneasy whenever we see any person who is not forgiving people who have trespassed against him or her. This uneasiness, though, should not lead us to tell other people that they should change their ways. Jesus tells us this, when He says, “Why do you see the mote in your brothers eye, but consider not the beam in your own? How can you say to your brother, “Let me pull the mote out of your eye”, when you have a beam in your own. You hypocrite, first pull the beam out of your eye, then you will see clearly to take the mote out of your brothers eye.” (Mt 7:3-5, & Lk 6:41-42). Whenever we consider, telling another person what we think he or she should do, we should remember, that we probably have many beams in our eyes, and that we can probably not see clearly enough, to know what that person should do.
The best thing we can do for any person, is to try to make it easier for that person to follow Jesus. If we tell another person about Jesus, we should tell that person things that Jesus says, and we should recommend that, that person read more of what Jesus said. We should then allow that person to decide, how to apply Jesus’ words to his or her own life. Jesus tells us all what we should do. We should all try to follow Jesus, and none of us should ever try to tell any other person what he or she should do.
Recognizing that Our Creator expects different amounts of goodness from each of us, helps us not judge as Jesus tells us not to judge. When Jesus tells us to forgive people who trespass against us, to give to all who ask of us and ask for nothing in return, and not to resist evil, we will be tempted to judge anyone we see not doing these things. What we must remember, though, is that none of us knows how much good Our Creator demands from any of us, or how much forgiveness any of us must show to people who trespass against us, to receive Our Creator’s forgiveness. One person may show more forgiveness, and may do more good, than another person, but may not receive Our Creator’s forgiveness while the second person may be forgiven, because more may have been given to the first person, and for this reason more may also have been demanded of the first person.
It will take many generations for us to make the changes in ourselves that will allow us to live as Jesus tells us to live. This will have to happen by each generation learning how to come a little bit closer to living as Jesus tells us to live, and that generation then passing whatever has been learned to the next generation, and by each generation encouraging people in the next generation not to imitate them but to instead improve on the way they have lived. It is often nearly as hard for us to see faults in our ancestors or parents, as it is for us to see faults in ourselves because we believe that faults bring shame on their owners and that if we do not ignore faults and weaknesses in our parents and ancestors, that our children and descendants will not ignore faults and weaknesses in us. In truth, though, there is no shame in faults or weaknesses. The only source of shame is not making progress toward reducing our faults and weaknesses, and not being a part of the intergenerational progress of our world that will allow our descendants to live as Jesus tells us to live. Jesus knows that today we cannot live as He tells us to live, and only expects each of us to help our world move toward a time when our descendants will be able to live this way. The amount of progress Jesus expects each of us to make depends on how much has been given to each of us, and while we cannot know how much progress is expected of any of us, we do know that if we try as hard as we can to live as Jesus tells us to live, we will be able to do all Our Creator expects of us, because Jesus says to us, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.” (Jn 6:35). Jesus will not return to judge our world until we have had enough time to have had a fair chance to have learned to live as He tells us to live. Maybe 2,000 years is enough time for us to do this. Maybe 2,000 years is a very short time to Jesus, and maybe the progress people have made toward living as he tells us to live, since He came to our world, is as much progress as He has expected us to make over this period. At least today most people in our world are able to read Jesus’ words, and many of us do read these words, and some of us try to understand them. Given the obstacles our ancestors have had to overcome, maybe this is as much as was expected of them. We cannot know and we should not try to know: “Judge not lest you be judged.” (Mt 7:1-2, & Lk 6:37).
Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. If you love those who love you, what thanks have you. Sinners also love those who love them. (Mt 5:39-48 & Lk 6:27-38). Though these things will be hard for us to do, when we see how much we need Our Creator’s forgiveness, we will do them, because we know that if we resist evil other people do to us, then Our Creator will resist evil we do to Him.
If we try to resist evil, we make it harder for ourselves to forgive people who trespass against us, and by doing this we make it harder for ourselves to receive Our Creator’s forgiveness. This will happen because if we try to resist evil that is done to us, hate towards people who do evil to us will grow in our hearts. While it is possible to renounce this hate and forgive people who do evil to us, it is very hard to do so, and often we will not be able to overcome our hate. This is why Jesus tries to keep this hate out of our hearts to begin with, by telling us not to resist evil.
Another reason Jesus tells us not to resist evil, is because we are often wrong in what we identify as evil and what we identify as good. Because of this our judgements will often be incorrect. Jesus tells us that this will be so, when He says to us, “Why do you see the mote in your brother’s eye, but ignore the beam in your own? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me pull the mote out of your eye’, when you have a beam in your own? You hypocrite, first pull the beam out of your eye, then you will see clearly to take the mote out of your brothers eye.” (Mt 7:3-5, & Lk 6:41-42). Because I know that I will often be wrong about what I identify as evil, I will try not to consider the speck of dust in my brother’s eye, but will try, instead, to consider the beams in my own eyes, And because I know that I will often be wrong about what I identify as evil, I will always try to see evil within myself before I see evil outside of myself. Because I know I will often be wrong about what I identify as evil, I will also try to identify evil correctly, by trying to adhere closely to Jesus’ words. If Jesus tells us to do a thing, I will consider that thing good. And if Jesus tells us not to do a thing, I will consider that thing evil; and that is all I will consider good or evil, and if Jesus does not talk about a thing, then I will not consider that thing to be either good or evil.
Many people try to make it seem as if Jesus’ teachings are conservative. These people imply that people in our society who live by traditional values, already follow Jesus, and that Jesus’ teachings encourage these people to remain as they are. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus’ teachings are actually revolutionary as no political revolution ever could be. In a political revolution powerful people and powerless people trade places, but the new rulers act essentially as the old rulers acted, and the new subjects act essentially as the old subjects acted. The only thing that could fundamentally transform our world would be for people to experience significant changes within themselves. Following Jesus will lead to significant changes within any person who follows Jesus, and all the changes it will lead to, will be changes for the better: both for our world as a whole and for each person who follows Jesus. People who follow Jesus will not act as rulers or as subjects toward other people. People who follow Jesus will instead, act as brothers and sisters toward all people.
Nothing less than trying as hard as we can to do all Jesus tells us to do, will heal the wounds that are tearing our world apart. Nothing less than trying as hard as we can to give to all who ask of us, and not ask for anything in return. Nothing less than trying as hard as we can to sell all that we have and distribute to the poor. Nothing less than trying as hard as we can not to resist evil. And nothing less than trying as hard as we can to forgive all people who trespass against us. While many people can help us learn how to do what Jesus tells us to do (including many people who do not call themselves Christians), many of the people who can help us in this way, also tell us that we can do less than what Jesus tells us to do and still please Our Creator. We know this is not true because we know that Our Creator wants our world to be healed, and because we know that nothing less than trying hard as we can to do all Jesus tells us to do, will heal our world.
Jesus tells us that great joy can only come from great suffering, when He says, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it lives alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit. (Jn 12:24)
Judge Not.
When we believe that some people are better than other people are, we include ourselves among the people who are better than other people. Jesus tells us of the evil doing this will lead us to do, when He says to the scribes and pharisees of Jerusalem, “You decorate the tombs of the prophets, and you say, ‘If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have partaken in the blood of the prophets.’ By saying this, you show that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.” (Mt 23:29-31).
None of us are kind or cruel. None of us are good or bad. The only reason that some people act more kindly than other people act, is because these people are wiser than other people are in pursuing their desires. These people know that they must try as hard as they can to always treat other people well, to be able to receive things they want and things they need. We all sometimes act cruelly toward each other because we all sometimes forget this and because we all sometimes doubt this. When we do so, though, we are not more cruel in our hearts than are people who do not act cruelly. We are only less wise in our actions.
Jesus tells us that we must treat all people who do harm to us, well, to get things we want and things we need, when He says, ”If you forgive men their trespasses, then your Father will also, but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, then neither will Your Father forgive you” (Mt 6:9-15), and when he says, “Forgive if you would be forgiven.” (Lk 6:37, see also Mt 6:9-15, and Mt 18:23-35). Jesus knows that we will not want to forgive people who trespass against us. This is why He tells us that the reason we should forgive these people, is that we want Our Father to forgive us, that if Our Father forgives us He will give us all we need and all we ask for, and that if Our Father does not forgive us we will receive very little of what we need or what we ask for, but will instead receive great punishment.
Though we are all evil, Jesus knows that we can all do good if we try to forgive people who trespass against us. This is why Jesus lived and died for us: so we could learn how to do enough good to receive Our Father’s forgiveness.
Jesus tells us not to try to determine who is following Him more closely, and who is following Him less closely, when He says to us “judge not, lest you be judged.” (Mt 7:2). This command applies just as much to judging ourselves as it applies to judging other people. And of course these two things are the same activity because when we judge ourselves we are comparing ourselves to other people, so we are judging them as well. Whenever we say that one person is good, we are saying that another person is bad, and that is the very judging we are told to refrain from.
I may do a horrible job of following Jesus’ commands, but at least I try to be honest about what these commands are. I do this because I know this honesty must be the first step toward true discipleship. If we are honest in this step then we will be able to build on this honesty and learn how to follow Jesus more closely. If we are not honest in this first step, though, then our attempts to follow Jesus will be built on a weak foundation, and will crumble in failure. What keeps most of us from being honest about what Jesus tells us to do, most of the time, is our desire to believe we are good. This is so because we can only do a small part of what Jesus tells us to do. So in order to believe we are good we must lie to ourselves about what Jesus tells us to do. The ability to admit we are evil is the greatest strength we can have, and the desire to believe we are good is the greatest weakness we can have.
Even though we cannot be good, there is a way we can get Our Creator to treat us well. Jesus tells us this way, when He says, “If you forgive men their trespasses then your Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, then neither will your Father forgive you.” (Mt 6:14-15) To do this we must admit we are not good, and we must admit we need Our Creator’s mercy. Often, though, we will not do this because we will not believe that Our Creator truly will show us mercy instead of justice, if we show mercy instead of justice to people who trespass against us. The good news Jesus brings us (that we will receive mercy if we show mercy). This news sounds too good to be true to most of us most of the time. Jesus tells us that we fear Our Creator will show us justice instead of mercy when He says, “The light has come into the world, and men loved darkness, rather than light, because their works were evil. (Jn 3:19-21), and when He says, “The World hates me because I testify that its works are evil.” (Jn 7:6-8).
If we do not overcome this fear we will try to judge ourselves and other people, and we will reject the mercy we are offered, because not judging is a necessary part of forgiving. When we judge, it is impossible for us to forgive, in the same way that it would be impossible for a person to run if that person had cut off his or her legs. The only difference is that when we judge we do ourselves more harm than we would if we cut off our legs. Judging and forgiving are opposites. If we have forgiven we will not judge and if we have judged we cannot forgive. This is true of everything Jesus tells us. Everything Jesus tells us to do is a part of forgiving.
Section 5.)
None of us will be able to sell all that we have and give to the poor, as Jesus tells us to do, (Lk 12:33, see also Lk 18:18-25, & Mt 19:16-24), because none of us will be able to sell things we think we need to have to survive. And none of us will be able to give to all who ask of us, when what other people ask of us is something we think we need to have to survive. Jesus knows we will not be able to do these things because our faith is small, and Jesus tells us this often.
The way in which we can come closest to selling all that we have and giving to the poor, and come closest to giving to all who ask of us, is by living as inexpensively as possible, so we will believe that we need little to survive, and so we will be able to give anything more than this as alms, and by doing so “Provide ourselves with wealth that will not grow old, an unfailing treasure in the heavens that no thief will come near to, and that no moth will corrupt.” (Lk 12:33, see also Lk 18:18-25, & Mt 19:16-24). When we believe that we need very little, we will be able to give anything else that we have to the poor and to all who ask of us.
In order to live as inexpensively as possible we must try to always think of things of God instead of thinking of things of men (Mt 16:23), and we must work with other people to eliminate expenses that are created by the nature of the society we live in, but that are not expenses that we must pay to get things of God. For example, in our cities today, most apartments and houses are built farther from the places where most people work than they have to be, forcing most people in our society to pay great expenses to travel from their home to their work. Expenses that could easily be avoided if most of us lived closer to our places of work. We also incur similar expenses whenever we live farther than we need to live from any places we need to go to. We can also reduce unnecessary expenses by sharing things we do need, and things of man that help us get things of God, much more often than we currently do. For example the abilities Our Creator gives us, are things of God, and things of man can often help us develop these abilities. This is especially true of books, music, stories, speeches, plays, movies, pictures, sculpture, and other works of art. These things will not always help us develop the intellectual abilities God has given us, but if they are well made, then often they will. These are also items that we will share with each other if we want to live inexpensively, so we will be able to give to the poor, and give to all who ask of us, as often as possible. Most items that we buy at so called “convenience stores” do not help us develop abilities God has given us, or help us very little, while they also do us great harm, and yet there are thousands of these stores in every large city, most of them are open 24 hours a day, and nearly all such stores are open until at least 11 p.m. every night. In a rational society most of these stores would be replaced by libraries, so we would be able to pursue things of God more effectively, and these libraries would offer many more services than they currently do.
Most things people create, sell and buy in wealthy societies, though, do not help us get things of God. Because of this, if we all pursued things of God instead of things of men, most jobs in our society would disappear. Over time, if more people try to get things of God, these jobs will be replaced by jobs that help people get things of God . Even before this happens though, the disappearance of these jobs will be a good thing for every person who currently works in a job that does not help people get things of God, If we do a better job of sharing with each other, as Jesus tells us to do when He tells us to give to the poor, and to give to all who ask of us. One of the most important ways in which we must share is by sharing the privilege of doing work that helps people get things of God. For a time there will be many fewer jobs that do this, than people who need to work. Today people performing at least four fifths of all jobs in wealthy societies do not help people get things of God while they are working. If at some point all of these jobs disappear and very few of them have been replaced by new jobs, then if we are trying to get things of God instead of things of men, we will share jobs that do help people get things of God by dividing each of these jobs into five parts so that five people can work one day a week, instead of one person working five days a week.. or so that five people can work one year with four years off, or five people work one month with four months off, instead of one person receiving the privilege of working in a job that makes people’s lives better all the time, for every four people who have to work in a job that make their lives and their customers lives worse. If we are living less expensively, then if we earn less money in this way, we will not need the money we would have earned by working five days a week. If we try to get things of God instead of things of men, then we will spend most of our time in libraries and in gyms that are as inexpensive as libraries, instead of spending that time wasting money on products that do not help us get things of God. We must also consider that we may not earn less money working one day a week producing things that help people get things of God, than we currently earn working five days a week. This may not happen because if most people stopped buying products that did not help them get things of God, then those people would spend more of their money on products that did help them get things of God, and as they did this the prices of these products would rise, and wages of workers making these products would also rise. We must remember that jobs and employment are things of man, and that as things of man, they only help us if they help us get things of God, and that if they do not help us get things of God they should either be reformed or be discarded. Jesus tells us never to pursue things of man instead of things of God when He says to Peter, “Get behind me Satan. You are an offence to me because you do not think of things of God, but think instead, of things of men.” (Mt 16:23), and when He says, Do not lay up treasure on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves dig through and steal. Instead, lay up treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not dig through and steal.” (Mt 6:19-23 & Lk 12:33)
In the same way we will all fight whenever someone tries to take something we think we need to have to survive, and whenever someone has something we think we need to have to survive, and will not share that thing with us. Though when we fight we reject the rewards Jesus promises to people who follow His teachings. We will only be able to refrain from fighting, when we believe we can get things other people have, that we think we need to have to survive, and keep things other people want, that we think we need to have to survive, without fighting, or when we see that we do not need things other people have or things other people want from us. When our faith in Jesus is strong, we will believe Him when He says, “First do God’s righteousness, and all that you need will be added unto you”, and we will follow His command to, “Take no thought for your life, for what you will eat or drink, or for what clothes you will wear. Your heavenly father knows you need these things. Instead, seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.” (Mt 6:25-33 & Lk 12:22-34). Often, though, our faith in Jesus will be too weak for us to do this, just as our faith will often be too weak for us to give to all who ask of us, when what people ask of us is something we think we need to have to survive. This is why it is important for us to live as inexpensively as possible. If we do this we will see that we seldom need things other people have, or that other people want to take from us. Doing this will help us follow Jesus when our faith is weak, and because our faith is too small to fill a grain of mustard seed (the smallest seed Jesus knew of), as Jesus tells us in Matthew 17:20, trying to follow Jesus when our faith is weak will do far more to help us follow Jesus than trying to strengthen our faith in Jesus will do. (though, of course, we should also try to make our faith in Jesus as strong as it can be.) Instead, though, most of us often try to convince ourselves that our faith is strong by lying to ourselves and each other about what Jesus teaches us, so we will believe that Jesus only tells us to do things that are relatively easy for us to do, and so we can make ourselves believe that our faith is strong by doing things that Jesus never told us to do. When we do this we reject rewards Jesus promises his followers, by not preparing ourselves to follow Jesus when our faith in Him is weak, and we often also reject these rewards by judging ourselves to be better than people who do not follow the false teachings we use to distract ourselves from Jesus’ true teachings. If we are not distracted from Jesus’ true teachings we will try to follow Jesus’ command not to judge, and we will always remember that if we are able to follow some of Jesus’ true teachings that other people are not able to follow, we are only able to do this because we have been led away from temptation that would lead us to do evil, and because Our Creator has given us the strength we need to have to be able to do His will at those times.
Because of the smallness of our faith, (Mt 6:30, Mt 8:26, Mt 14:31, Mt 16:8, Lk 12:28, & Mt 17:20), because of the weakness of the flesh that this lack of faith leads to in us, (Mt 26:41, LK 22:46, Mt 6:5-15 & Lk 11:2-4, & Lk 16:9), and because of our consequent inability to do much good (Lk 18:10-14), we must always try to do whatever good we can do most easily, first.
It will be much easier for us to do what Jesus tells us to do, if we try to do all that Jesus tells us to do, than it will be if we only try to do part of what Jesus tells us to do. This is so because doing any thing Jesus tells us to do, will help us do other things Jesus tells us to do.
Jesus’ command to sell all that we have and distribute to the poor (Lk 12:33, see also Lk 18:18-25, & Mt 19:16-24), tells us to develop every ability we are able to develop, and to then use every ability we possess in the service of the poor. Jesus gives this command to a young rich man, but we must remember that with regard to abilities we are able to develop to a greater extent than most other people, we are all rich. So, with regard to these abilities, this command applies to all of us. These abilities will be different for different people. Which abilities any person will be able to develop to a greater extent than other people, depends on that person’s circumstances. Jesus tells us that the extent to which any of us are able to develop any ability, depends on our circumstances, when He says “Whoever has been given much, much will be demanded of him.” (Lk 12:48). Whatever abilities any of us, is able to develop, though, we are commanded to give to the poor, for these abilities are clearly a large part of “all that we have.” And as a part of giving to the poor, we must also help all people other than ourselves, develop any ability they can develop and then hope that those people will give those abilities to the poor. Obviously we give the most to the poor, when these people actually do use abilities they develop to serve the poor, but we cannot tell which people will do this, and even if we could tell which people were more likely to offer their abilities to the poor, it would still be important to help all people develop as many abilities in themselves as possible, because there is always a chance that any particular person will offer his or her abilities to the poor, (and we cannot know how great a chance there is that any particular person will do this.).
For many of us, developing abilities in ourselves that we then dedicate to the service of the poor, is the way in which we can give the most to the poor. The more conventional way of giving as much as we can to the poor, is using our abilities to get as much money as we can, and then giving that money to the poor. And for some people, this is the way they can give the most to the poor. The poor, though, also need many things that do not now exist, (including beautiful music that has not yet been produced, and including a better understanding of Jesus.). A better understanding of Jesus, is something that we all need, and dedicating our abilities to helping people who seek understanding, to understand Jesus better, will for many of us, help the poor more than all the money we could earn, would help the poor.
Section 6.)
Jesus tells us how much more important our actions are, than our words, when He says to the chief priests and elders of Jerusalem, “A certain man had two sons. This man said to the his first son, “Go work in my vineyard.” This son said, “I will not”, but later repented and went. This man then said the same thing to his second son, and that son said, “I go sir”, but went not.” Jesus then asked, “Which of these two did the will of their father?” and when a person answered, “The first”, Jesus said, “Truly , I tell you the publicans and the harlots will enter the kingdom of God before you will.” (Mt 21:28-32). Just as Jesus tells us that our words mean nothing if we do not live as He teaches, Jesus also tells us often that religious rituals mean nothing if we do not live as our creator wants us to live. Jesus tells this when He says to a Pharisee who was surprised when Jesus did not perform a ritual washing before eating, “You Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. You fools, did not He who made the outside of things also make their insides. Instead give alms of what you have and all things will be clean to you.” (Lk 11:37-41, see also Mt 23:25-26). And when He says to these scribes and Pharisees, “You are like whitewashed graves which indeed appear beautiful from the outside, but are within full of dead men’s bones and all manner of filth. (Mt 23:27-28, and Lk 11:44). Jesus never tells the pharisees He speaks to, to change their religious rituals, because He knows that if people follow His teachings then any religious ritual will help them as much as any other religious ritual, but that if people do not follow His teachings, then no religious ritual will help them at all. Jesus tells us again that religious rituals mean nothing if we do not live as Our Creator wants us to live, when He says, “What goes into the mouth does not defile a man. It is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a man. For what goes into the mouth comes out in the draught. But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and from the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesses, and blasphemies. These things defile a man.” (Mt 15:10-20). Jesus also warns us that, if they are misused, religious rituals can keep us from doing Our Creator’s will. Jesus tells us this when He says to people who thought that he should not heal on the Sabbath, “Who among you would not save a sheep that had fallen into a pit on the woe Sabbath day, and how much better is a man than a sheep. Therefore it is lawful to do good works on the Sabbath days” (Mt 12:9-13, see also Lk 6:7-11, Lk 13:10-17, and Lk 14:1-6). And Jesus tells us that we should not perform religious rituals at all if we are not at peace with our brothers and sisters, when He says to us, “If you bring a gift to the altar and remember that your brother has something against you. Leave the altar and first be reconciled with your brother, and then offer your gift.” (Mt 5:23-24.. Jesus tells us that religious ceremonies only help us if they help us do what Our Creator wants us to do when He says when He says to the pharisees of Jerusalem, “Woe to you pharisees. You pay tithe of mint, thyme, anise, and cumin, but omit weightier matters of law, judgment, mercy and faith.” (Mt 23:23 & Lk 11:42 ). Mint, thyme, anise, and cumin can be good things, if they lead us to think about law, judgment, mercy, and faith, and if they lead us to try to follow the law, to try to have faith, and to try to show mercy to other people. If they do not lead us to do these things, though, then mint, thyme, anise, cumin, or any other ceremonial scent or material, are distractions that keep us from seeing Our Creator’s will, and that bring us only woe. What Jesus says of the scribes and pharisees He spoke to, is true of all of us. While nearly 2000 years ago the leaders of the Jewish people helped kill Jesus, many of the Jewish people Jesus spoke to, became devoted followers of Jesus and founded the early Christian Church. Without these people, those of us who are alive today would never have heard or read Jesus’ words, and would know nothing about Jesus. If Jesus had come to another people, He might have been ignored or might have been killed and then forgotten. We know that no people would have welcomed Jesus, because Jesus tells us that all people will hate Him when He says, “The light has come into the world, and men loved darkness, rather than light, because their works were evil. Everyone who does evil, hates the light, and stays away from the light for fear his works will be reproved” (Jn 3:19-21), and when he says, “The World hates me because I testify that its works are evil” (Jn 7:2-8). Though most Jewish people do not say they follow Jesus, often Jewish people who do not say they follow Jesus, come closer to living as Jesus tells us to live, than do those of us who do say we follow Jesus. And often Jewish people who do not say they follow Jesus, do not come as close to living as Jesus tells us to live, as do those of us who say we follow Jesus. On average there is probably no difference between how closely different groups of people come to living as Jesus tells us to live. If there is a difference, we cannot tell which groups of people come closest to living as Jesus tells us to live, and Jesus tells us not to try to determine this when He says, “Judge not lest you be judged.” (Mt 7:1-2, & Lk 6:37). Jesus’ teaches us what Our Creator wants us to do so we can identify errors we and other people make, but Jesus also tells us often that in spite of the knowledge He offers us, we will all often do evil, (Jn 3:19-21 and Jn 7:2-8, MT 26:41, LK 22:46, MT 6:13, Lk 11:4, LK 16:9, Lk 9:23, MT 16:24, & Lk 14:26-33.), and Jesus tells us not to try to determine which people come closer to living as He tells us to live, than other people, when He says, ”Judge not, lest you be judged.” Jesus tells us that He wants us to identify errors and identify evil when we can identify errors and identify evil, and when identifying these things will help us more than it will hurt us, when He tells His disciples to be, “As wise as serpents, and as harmless as doves” (Mt 10:16). We must sometimes try to identify errors and evil because we must act, because we must choose before we can act, because our choices are based at least in part on our beliefs about what is good and what is evil. We all try to avoid some actions because we believe they are evil, and we all try to perform other actions because we believe they are good. Believing that any person is doing evil, is not judging that person. Judging only occurs if we believe that another person does more evil than we do, or if we believe that another person does so much evil that Our Creator will not forgive that person. Jesus tells us to always try to identify evil first in ourselves when He says, “Why do you see the mote in your brother’s eye, but ignore the beam in your own? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me pull the mote out of your eye’, when you have a beam in your own? You hypocrite, first pull the beam out of your eye, then you will see clearly to take the mote out of your brothers eye.” (Mt 7:3-5, & Lk 6:41-42). Because we know that our vision will be clouded by beams in our eyes, we should be very doubtful of our ability to identify good or evil, and if we are wise we will only try to identify good or evil when we must try to identify good and evil in order to choose how we will act, (or if we are trying to help another person when we that person must identify good and evil to choose how he or she will act.) The fact that our vision will often be clouded by beams in our eyes is part of the reason Jesus tells us not to try to force other people to do what we think they should do, but to only try to persuade other people to do what we think they should do. (Mt 18:15-17, & Mt 5:38-48). The more closely any person follows Jesus, the more that person will see both errors and evil in him or herself, and in other people, and the less that person will try to judge whether any person does more evil than any other person, or try to judge what evil Our Creator will forgive.
Jewish people have often lived under difficult circumstances that have made it especially hard for them to forgive people who trespass against them, and for them not to resist evil (as Jesus teaches us to do). Under these circumstances the Jewish people have often come closer to living as Jesus tells us to live, than peoples who call themselves Christian have come under easier circumstances. Still, few Jewish people have forgiven people who have trespassed against them, often enough to heal the wounds that are tearing them apart, and that are tearing their part of our world apart, just as few people from any group have forgiven people who have trespassed against them, often enough to heal the wounds that are tearing them apart, and that are tearing their part of our world apart.
Our inability to have more than a small amount of faith in Jesus, is the reason we will all seldom do what Jesus tells us to do. Because our faith in Jesus is weak we will seldom believe Jesus when He tells us that though following him will lead to current suffering, that suffering will be more than made up for by future rewards that people who follow Jesus will receive. When we believe this then we will try as hard as we can to do all that Jesus tells us to do in order to receive the rewards Jesus tells us of. When we do not follow Jesus, we do this because at that moment we do not have faith that following Jesus will bring us rewards that will more than make up for suffering we believe will come to us from following Jesus. Jesus tells us that we are capable of little faith every time He says to us, “O you of little faith” (Mt 6:30, Mt 8:26, Mt 14:31, Mt 16:8, & Lk 12:28), and Jesus tells us again that our faith will be weak when He says to His disciples, “If your faith were as a grain of mustard seed, you could tell that mountain to move, and it would move.” (Mt 17:20). This tells us that unless a person can make a mountain move by telling it to move, that person does not have enough faith to fill the smallest seed Jesus knew of. . Jesus says, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” Mt 26:41 & LK 22:46). Our inability to have great faith is the reason our flesh is weak. When we believe Jesus’ promise that we will receive rewards that will more than make up for our suffering, then the desire of our flesh to avoid pain and to feel pleasure will lead us to do what Jesus tells us to do. It is not that we cannot endure current suffering to receive greater pleasure in the future, that keeps us from following Jesus most of the time. It is that most of the time we do not believe that following Jesus will bring us future pleasure that will be greater than our current suffering. We want to imagine that the weakness of our flesh is not a sign of the weakness of our faith, because we want to be able to say we have faith in Jesus even when we do not follow His teaching. This is just a way of trying to convince ourselves that we do not need Our Creator’s forgiveness, but that we deserve rewards from Our Creator because of our faith. Believing this allows us to believe we will receive things we want from Our Creator for our faith, not for forgiving people who trespass against us, even though Jesus says to us, “If you do not forgive men their trespasses against you, then neither will your father forgive you.” (Mt 6:9-15, see also Lk 6:37, and Mt 18:23-35). The truth about our faith is that our actions measure our faith. How often we follow Jesus’ teachings shows how strongly we believe Jesus. When we follow Jesus, then we believe Jesus. When we do not follow Jesus, then we do not believe Jesus. (Regardless of what we say about Jesus). Jesus tells us that we should not try to determine if we have as much faith as Our Creator demands of Us, when He says, “Judge not, lest you be judged. For with whatever judgement you judge, you shall be judged.” (Mt 7:1-2, & Lk 6:37). Trying to judge consumes time and energy that Jesus wants us to spend trying to forgive people who trespass against us.
Because our faith will be weak Jesus knows that we will never be able to have faith in more than a small portion of what He tells us. Though we will all often not do what Jesus tells us Our Creator wants us to do, if we try to follow Jesus, then we will be able to follow Jesus often enough to receive rewards Jesus tells us of. Jesus tells us this when He says, “Take no thought for your life, for what you will eat or drink, or for what clothes you will wear. Your heavenly father knows you need these things. Instead, seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. Take no thought for the morrow: for the morrow will take thought for itself. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.” (Mt 6:25-34 & Lk 12:22-34). If we try to plan ahead we will increase our fears, and these fears will lead us to do greater evil than we will do if we do not try to plan ahead. Jesus is telling us that there is enough evil in each day without us adding to that evil by trying to plan ahead. And Jesus tells us that if we try to follow Him, we will be able to follow Him often enough to receive rewards He tells us of when He says “Ask, and it will be given you, seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, it will be opened.” (Mt 7:7-8 & Lk 11:9-10), “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” (Jn 14:14). If we ask in Jesus’ name, then we will also try as hard as we can to live as Jesus tells us to live, by trying as hard as we can to forgive all people who trespass against us. If we do not do this then we will not have a voice with which to ask. Forgiveness is the voice that allows us to ask. We know this because we know that if Our Father has not forgiven a person, then Our Father will not give that person all that he or she asks for.
Jesus only cares that we have enough faith in Him to do what He tells us to do. Because Jesus knows our faith will be weak, He knows that we will never be able to have faith in more than a small portion of what He tells us. Because of this Jesus tells us both about rewards His followers will receive in this life and about rewards that will come after this life ends. Jesus knows that some of us will be able to have faith in rewards that will come in this life, and that some of us will be able to have faith in rewards that will come after this life, but that almost none of us will be able to have faith in both rewards that will come in this life, and rewards that will come after this life ends. This is at least part of the reason Jesus says, “There is no man, who has left house or parents, or wife or children for the kingdom of God’s sake, who will not receive many times more in the present time, and in the world to come, life everlasting” (Lk 18:29-30). Some people can only believe in rewards in a life after this life because, though they cannot believe that anything in this world could more than make up for the suffering they see, they can believe that rewards in a world to come could more than make up for the suffering they see. While other people can believe only in rewards in this life, because though they cannot believe in things for which they can see no evidence, they can sometimes see evidence of Our Creator’s rewards in this world, and when they see a person who they think is following Jesus, suffer, but do not see evidence of rewards that more than make up for the suffering they see, they can believe either that they are failing to see rewards that exist in this world, or that the person they see is not truly following Jesus. Whatever any of us is able to believe; if that is enough to lead us to live as Jesus tells us to live, then we will be as close to Jesus as His closest relatives. “Whoever shall do the will of My Father in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother. (Mt 12:46-50, see also Lk 8:19-21). But if whatever we are able to believe in is not enough to lead us to do what Jesus tells us to do, then on the day of Judgement Jesus will say to us, “leave me you worker of iniquity. (Mt 7:21-23: see also Lk 6:46).
Jesus only cares that each of us call Our Creator by whatever name helps us most in trying to do what Our Creator wants us to do. The words, “God, Gott, Bog, Chuv, Dieu, Domine, Theo, Yaweh, Allah, Brahman, Omazd, Akal Purakh, Ekam, Shang Ti, Ameratsu, Molongo, Tangaroa, and Taiowa, ” are just a few of the names that different people call Our Creator. Differences between different religious words, rituals, and ceremonies are differences of style, not differences of substance. The substance of what Our Creator wants us to do is the same for all people. If we do not sincerely try to forgive all people who trespass against us, then nothing we say to Our Creator will lead us to receive Our Creator’s forgiveness, but if we do sincerely try to forgive people who trespass against us, then nothing we say will keep us from receiving Our Creator’s forgiveness.
If they are considered by themselves, many things that Jesus says to us can be misleading, because these things show us only one facet of a complex way of living, but when considered together all that Jesus says to us, shows us how Our Creator wants us to live. This is easiest for us to see when we look at what Jesus tells us about the division He will bring to our world. If Jesus did not also say to us, “I came that I might save the world.” (Jn 12:47), we might believe that the division Jesus will bring to our world, would be permanent division rather than temporary division that is a necessary step we must take before we can all come together to be saved together. If Jesus had meant to bring permanent division to our world, He would have said that He only came that He might save part of our world; not that He came that He might save the entire world. We can also see this when we realize that we might believe that Jesus was talking about saying that we follow Him when He said , “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one shall come to The Father, except through me”, (Jn 14:6), if Jesus did not also say, “Not all who say, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father. On the day of judgement, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name?, and in your name cast out demons?, and in your name done many wonderful works? And I will say to them, “I never knew you. Leave me, you workers of iniquity.” (Mt 7:21-23: see also Lk 6:46).
Jesus tells us that on rare occasions we should not sell what we have and give to the poor, if we instead use what we have to show our love for Him or His teachings in other ways. Jesus tells us this when, shortly before His death, a woman poured very precious ointment on Jesus’ head as he sat at meat. Then his disciples had indignation, saying, To what purpose this waste, this ointment might have been sold for much and the money given to the poor.) When Jesus heard this he said “Why do you trouble this woman? She has wrought a good work upon me. For you always have the poor with you, but me you do not always have. She has poured this ointment on my body for my burial. Wherever this gospel shall be preached what this woman has done shall be included as a memorial of her.” (Mt 26:7-13)
Jesus’ most valuable teaching is an attempt to get us to treat other people well, when we feel anger toward those people. This is Jesus’ teaching that, “If you forgive men their trespasses, then your father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, then neither will your father forgive you (MT 6:9-15). If we only forgive people who we believe deserve forgiveness, then Our Creator will only forgive us if He believes that we deserve forgiveness, and this may lead to great suffering for us. So we should not try to determine which people deserve forgiveness but we should instead forgive all people, so that we can be forgiven.
Jesus’ teachings help people who feel great anger, treat other people well. People who feel great anger, and who have learned the lessons Jesus teaches, will treat other people much better than people who feel less anger, but who only try to treat other people well if they feel warmly toward those people. People who do this, will be fair weather friends who will treat other people badly as soon as their feelings toward those people change. And sadly this is the way most people are. Because of this, these people do not truly have any personal values. The only true values are those things that we will do for a person whether we feel great affection for that person or feel great anger toward that person.
People who understand this, will also be much more likely to understand that the most important thing they can do to try to help any person is to try to understand that person. This is true because people who may try to help us in other ways, will more often than not, do us the greatest harm, because more often than not, they will not understand us. If we have not tried to understand a person, then we have not truly tried to help that person. And any feelings of affection that we think we have for that person will only be hypocritical lies that we tell ourselves.
Our feelings are determined by what people with power over us have done to us, and it is a waste of energy for us to try to control what we feel. Instead we should devote all our energy to controlling what we do, and if our feelings need to change for us to do what we must do, then focusing on our actions, is the best way to change those feelings, anyway. We should treat other people well, and let our feelings be whatever they will be.
Everything that Jesus tells us to do is a part of forgiving people who trespass against us, is a part of helping other people whenever we are able to do so, is a part of not judging ourselves to be better than any other person, is a part of thinking of things of God instead of things of men, is a part of humbling ourselves, and is a part of putting Our Creator’s desire ahead of our desire.
If we are able to do these things, then we will do all Jesus tells us to do. None of us will be able to do all Jesus tells us to do, though, because none of us will always be able to forgive people who do harm to us. If we were always able to forgive other people, then we would always treat other people as Jesus tells us to treat them. When we do forgive other people, then we will do all Jesus tells us to do for those people. If a person has not trespassed against us, and if we do not try as hard as we can to do all Jesus tells us to do for other people, for that person, then we will be telling ourselves that that person has trespassed against us and we will not be trying to forgive that person.
Living as Jesus tells us to live, will heal the wounds that are tearing our world apart and that are tearing each of us apart, even if we learn how to live as Jesus tells us to live, from someone other than Jesus, who does not talk about Jesus, and who does not try to follow Jesus, and even if we do not say that we follow Jesus.) Other teachers often teach some of the same lessons that Jesus teaches, and people who follow other teachers often learn and do more of what Jesus teaches us, than do those of us who say we follow Jesus. This includes teachers who we call religious teachers. Jesus’ teachings are not religious teachings, though there is a religion called Christianity. Jesus’ teachings show us what Our Creator wants all of us to do, whatever our religion may be, and are equally valuable to all people, regardless of a person’s religion, and are needed by all people, regardless of a person’s religion.
Jesus tells us that if we live as He tells us to live, then we will be as close to Him as His closest family members, when, “as He stood at a podium before a large crowd, Jesus was told that His mother and brothers were outside the building He was speaking in, and wished to see Him. Jesus then asked the person who had told Him this, ‘Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?’, then Jesus stretched forth his hand to his disciples and said, ‘Behold my mother and my brothers. Whoever shall do the will of My Father in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother’”. (Mt 12:46-50), “My mother and brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it.” (Lk 8:19-21). And Jesus tells us that if we do not live as He tells us to live, then saying that we follow Him will not help us, when He says, “Not all who say, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father. On the day of judgement, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name?, and in your name cast out demons?, and in your name done many wonderful works? And I will say to them, “I never knew you. Leave me, you workers of iniquity.” (Mt 7:21-23: see also Lk 6:46). Because Jesus tells us these things, we know that when Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one shall come to The Father, except through me”, (Jn 14:6), He is saying that living as He teaches us to live, is the way, the truth and the life, not that saying that we follow Him, is the way, the truth and the life. And because Jesus tells us these things, we also know that when Jesus says, “Whoever confesses me before men. I will confess him before My Father in heaven. And whoever denies me before men. I will deny him before My Father” (Mt 10:32, see also Lk 9:26 and Mk 8:38), Jesus is speaking of confessing Him by living as He teaches us to live. If we do not live as Jesus teaches us to live, then we will not able to confess Jesus, even if our mouths say we are confessing Him, and if we do live as Jesus teaches us to live, we will not be able to deny Jesus, regardless of what we say about Him. Many people try to confess Jesus with their mouths, but do not confess Jesus with their actions. These people have no voice with which to confess Jesus. And many people say they oppose Jesus because they believe that the way they see people who call themselves Christians, act, is the way Jesus teaches us to act, when the people they see are not acting as Jesus teaches. People who do this, though they often do not know it, are speaking out in favor of Jesus, against people who are denying the true meaning of His teachings. Jesus tells us that Our Creator cares much more about what we say about His teachings than about what we say about His name, when He says, “Blasphemy against the Son Of Man will be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” (Mt 12:32 & Lk 12:10). The Son of Man is Jesus’ name, and the Holy Spirit is Jesus’ teachings and the help Our Creator gives to people who try to follow those teachings. Jesus is telling us that Our Creator will forgive blasphemy against the name of Jesus, but will not forgive blasphemy against the teachings of Jesus.
I often call Our Creator by many different names, (including God, Gott, Bog, Chuv, Dieu, Theo, Allah, Brahman, Shang Ti, Ameratsu, Molongo, Tangaroa, Taiowa, and many other names). With regard to revealed truth, though, I believe that Our Creator only sent one messenger for us to always follow. And has sent other messengers to help us learn important lessons, but not for us to always follow. I think that we can tell who this messenger is, by noticing that there is only one teacher whose teachings will heal the wounds that are tearing our world apart, if they a significant number of people, try to follow those teachings.
Many different teachers teach lessons that will allow us to start to heal our world and our selves, but only Jesus teaches us everything that we must do to completely heal our world and our selves. The reason for this is that no teacher other than Jesus, tells us to do all that Jesus tells us to do. If any person sees all that Jesus tells us to do, as an unstated part of the commands of any other teacher, and tries as hard as he or she can to do all of these things, then that person will receive all of the rewards that Jesus promises us, whether or not that person says that he or she follows Jesus. Because we know that no other teacher tells us to do all that Jesus tells us to do, we also know that any person who does this must be reading ideas that came from Jesus, into the meanings that they see in other teachings. But this really doesn’t matter as far as the rewards that Jesus promises, are concerned. For each of us, our best opportunity to do what Our Creator wants us to do, lies in trying to directly follow Jesus, but if some people can learn how to do what Jesus tells us to do, from another teacher, then I admire these people for having taken a more difficult path to wisdom, and still finding as much wisdom as any of us can find. And I will be happy for these people to receive all of the rewards that I hope to receive.
The other teacher who comes closest to telling us to do all that Jesus tells us to do, is the teacher Buddha. But even if Buddha told us to do exactly what Jesus tells us to do, Buddha’s teachings would not be able to heal the wounds of our world, as Jesus’ teachings can heal our world, because most of us, would never seriously consider following Buddha, because most people in our world, disagree with the profound pessimism that leads Buddha to say that life is suffering, and that leads him to recommend that we do the things he tells us to do, as a way to eliminate suffering in ourselves by eliminating desire in ourselves. While Jesus also often tells us that we must renounce our desires, at other times Jesus tells us how we can get things that we desire, and Jesus never tells us to try to eliminate all desire in ourselves. Jesus is telling us to renounce some parts of our desire, so we will be able to satisfy other parts of our desire. The belief that if we renounce some desires, we will be able to satisfy other desires, is what most people in our world believe, and this belief is probably correct. The error that most people make, is trying to get away with sacrificing too little of what they desire. And as a result of this, most people in our world, are able to get very little of what they want. Living as Jesus teaches us to live would correct this error. While doing this would require us to try to do many things that Jesus commands, that we do not want to try to do, and that very few of us currently try to do, (whether we call ourselves Christians or not). Living as Jesus tells us to live, would allow us to get more of what we want, than any other way of living would allow, and is the best bargain we can make with a world that will not allow us to satisfy every desire we have.
Even if Buddha were correct in saying that life is suffering, Our Creator would not have sent a messenger who would have preached in a way that requires people to adopt so pessimistic a philosophy, before they will do what He wants them to do, when adopting this philosophy is not a necessary part of doing these things, unless Our Creator sent that messenger to prepare the way for a messenger who, like Jesus, would not preach in this way, and sent that messenger to help us understand Jesus better, by allowing us to compare him to Jesus, as I am doing now. This tells us that Buddha is not a messenger sent by Our Creator for us to follow in the same way that Jesus is, even though Buddha teaches many of the same things that Jesus teaches. Another fact that tells us that Buddha is not a messenger sent by Our Creator for us to follow in the same way that Jesus has been sent, is that Jesus teaches us that we are all fallible, and teaches us how to take our fallibility into account, and how to live wisely with our fallibility, while Buddha teaches none of these things. Buddha teaches that people can attain what he sees as perfection, but Jesus teaches that we should try to be perfect, (when He says, “Be you perfect as your father is perfect.”, (Mt 5:48)), but also often tells us that we will all often fail to act as we should act, (see especially Mt 26:41 & LK 22:46, Mt 6:5-15 & Lk 11:2-4, Luke 16:9, Jn 3:19-21, Jn 7:6-8, Lk 14:26-33, Lk 9:23 & Mt 16:24, Mt 26:40, & Lk 22:45-46, & Mt 6:30, Mt 8:26, Mt 14:31, Mt 16:8, & Lk 12:28) and tells us that we all need Our Creator’s forgiveness. Our desire to get this forgiveness, is the reason we should forgive people who do evil to us; as Jesus tells us we must do, when He says to us, “If you forgive men their trespasses, then your Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, then neither will Your Father forgive you” (Mt 6:9-15), “Forgive if you would be forgiven.” (Lk 6:37, see also Mt 6:9-15, and Mt 18:23-35). The fact that Jesus tells us to treat other people well, not because they deserve to be treated well, but because doing so will help us, is one of the great strengths of Jesus’ teaching, because this teaching helps us keep ourselves from trying to determine whether or not any person deserves to be treated well. Jesus also tells us not to try to determine what other people deserve, when He tells us not to judge. (Mt 7:1-2, & Lk 6:37) Telling us to treat other people well, not for their sake, but for our sake, is also a strength of Buddha’s teaching, but Buddha teaches that we should treat other people well in order to eliminate desire in ourselves, not in order to gain our Creator’s forgiveness. I am pleased that Buddha teaches many of the same lessons Jesus teaches, and I recognize that, often, people who follow Buddha, will do more of what Jesus tells us to do, than will those of us who say we follow Jesus.
Other than Buddha, no teacher other than Jesus, comes close to telling us to do all that Jesus tells us to do, and this is why no other teachings can come close to healing the wounds of our world. Many other teachers, though, teach some of what Jesus teaches, and people who follow those teachers will often do more of what Jesus tells us to do, than will those of us who say we follow Jesus.
Living as Jesus tells us to live, is the best way to start to heal our world and our selves, and is the only way to finish healing our world and our selves.
Some people believe we can act wisely by trying to foresee the effects of our actions and by then deciding how we will act on the basis of the effects we foresee. If we do this we will not be able to act wisely, though, because we can never foresee more than a very small portion of the effects of any action, and even if we foresee these effects accurately, the effects we cannot see will usually be much greater than the effects we can see. We also cannot see how our lives and our world would be different if we or other people had acted differently in the past, and most importantly we cannot see what would have happened if large numbers of people had lived as Jesus tells us to live, because, at least since 324 a.d. when the Christian Church supported roman emperor Constantine and the violence his power was built on, very few people have lived as Jesus tells us to live. If we try to base our decisions on effects of our actions that we foresee, we will chose to foresee effects that will justify whatever we want to do, or we will be led to foresee effects that will justify what other people want us to do. Neither of these things will lead us to act wisely. For this reason, if we try to act on the basis of effects we can foresee, we will be led by fad and fashion to act first in one way and then in a contrary way, and any progress we make toward living well will usually be cancelled by other actions we take, and we will be blown to and fro like a leaf in the wind, as our actions are controlled by our irrational emotions or by other people’s desire to exploit us, but not by our rational thought. When we can see all the effects of an action (as we sometimes can in the physical sciences), then if we do not choose to only see effects that we want to see, we will be able to make valid decisions based on effects we can see. Outside of the physical sciences, though, we will never be able to see all the effects of any action, and even in the physical sciences we will usually choose to only see some of the effects of any action. Because of this, our only chance to live wisely will be to act consistently on the basis of beliefs we have about what actions will lead to effects that will bring happiness and contentment to us and to other people, even though we know we will not be able to see or foresee all of the effects of acting on those beliefs. If our beliefs are incorrect, `then doing this will still not lead us to act wisely, but when we do this at least we have a chance of acting wisely. Over 200 years ago Immanuel Kant showed us this when he showed us that what we see depends much more on what we are like than on what whatever we are looking at, is like. While many people since have disagreed with Kant’s description of the categories we impose on what we see, No respected thinker has challenged Kant’s insight that our perceptions determine what we see. In spite of this, many people who understand Kant’s insight do not use that understanding to live wisely. If we do not use our ability to think, to improve our lives, then we might as well not think at all.
Trying to find accurate evidence of the effects of our actions, is important as a starting point, because if we try hard to guard against our personal biases by first trying to analyze evidence with one set of biases, and then trying to examine the same evidence with the opposite set of biases, and then trying to examine this evidence with many different sets of biases, and if all of these analyses seem to lead to the same conclusion, then evidence will be an important tool in pointing us toward what we believe to be the truth. Truths that guide our world do exist. Physical sciences clearly show us many examples of this. The difficulty for us, is that we often cannot see these truths, and often see falsehoods when we search for truth. To give up on the attempt to find truth, though, is to give up on the activity that does more than any other activity to enrich our lives. Physical sciences show us many examples of this. If people who developed these sciences, had given up on the attempt to find truth, then we might never have believed falsehoods, but we also would never have discovered many truths that have been very valuable to us. And trying to examine evidence in a way that takes our biases into account, is the best way for us to start searching for the truth. Because our biases are so strong though, and are so hard for us to overcome, we know that they will usually lead us to see whatever we want to see, in evidence that we analyze. So it is still more important that we identify principles that we believe are true, and try to act consistently on the basis of these principles. In addition to giving us a better chance of acting wisely in the short term, doing this will also allow provide us with much more complete evidence of the effects of acting in a certain way, than we could see in any other way, so that when we try to analyze evidence without being overcome by our biases, we will have a much better chance of succeeding in this endeavor,
In searching for the truth, what is most important, though, is that we identify problems we suffer from and then identify actions that will remedy those problems. For example it is clear to all people that the greatest cause of suffering in our world, is the human division that leads us to mistreat each other, and it is clear that forgiving people who we believe have done evil to us, and not judging people, as Jesus commands, will at least start to heal this human division.
Jesus says to us, “Do not swear at all.” And He tells us not to swear because swearing makes us believe that we have more power than we actually have. (Mt 5:33-37).
This command must also apply to the swearing that we do when we take wedding vows. Sometimes Jesus tells us why He gives a certain command, and sometimes He doesn’t. I don’t believe that I will ever know all of the reasons that Jesus tells us to do anything. This command certainly is at odds with the teachings of most churches that call themselves Christian. (the Quaker church is the only exception that I have heard of, and I am not sure that even this church still teaches what Jesus taught in this area). Whatever different churches may teach, though, in the end, I just try to do what Jesus tells us to do.
Following the commands of other people, is the most dangerous thing we can do because following the commands of other people, leads us to do far grater evil than we do for any other reason. All human history teaches this lesson.
Jesus tells us not to follow the commands of any person, but to only follow His commands, when He says to His disciples, “Be not you called Rabbi, for you have a teacher and you are all brothers. And call no man father, for you have a Father in the heavens. Neither be you called master, for Christ is your master.” (Mt 23: 5-12 & Lk 20: 45-47). This tells us that we must never call people any name that might lead us to follow those people instead of following Our Creator, and rabbi, father, and master are only three examples of these names. Jesus is not a secretary or a list maker. Jesus is instead our teacher and, if we are wise, Jesus will also be our master. If Jesus had tried to list every name we should reserve for Our Creator and for Him, He would have had less time left for the rest of His teaching. Thankfully Jesus did not do this. Jesus tells us enough names for us to see what those names have in common, and then Jesus leaves it to us, to add to this list each time we learn of another name that might lead us to follow people instead of following Him. The names Reverend and Pastor are two of the names we should add to this list. A reverend is anything that is an end toward which we direct reverence. Revere no man for there is one in the heavens whom you revere. While people can be pastors to sheep, only Jesus can be a pastor to people. Call no man pastor, for Christ is your pastor.
Because Jesus also tells us not to resist evil (Mt 5:38-41), we know we should not fight against people who try to force us to follow them, but we should do everything that is consistent with following Jesus teachings, to try to avoid being forced to follow the commands of other people. Because Jesus also tells us to love our enemies (Mt 43-48), we should try to create an environment for our enemies that will lead them try to do as little evil as possible, so they will receive as little punishment from Our Creator as possible, and as a part of doing this we should let people who try to give us commands, believe we are following their commands whenever we can do this, and can live as Jesus tells us to live. It is important to remember that when we do this we are not actually following other people, but are instead following Jesus. It is strange for us to think of all people who try to give us commands as our enemies, because often people very close to us try to give us commands, but even if they do not realize it, people very close to us will often be our enemies. Jesus tells us that this will be so, when He says to His disciples, “A person’s foes will be of his own household” (Mt 10:36).
Section 8.)
The World hates me because I testify that its works are evil. (Jn 7:6-8). The light has come into the world, and men loved darkness, rather than light, because their works were evil. (Jn 3:19-21).
To make it easier for us to hide from Jesus’ light, we have surrounded Jesus‘ teachings with a tradition of errors and misinterpretations, that obscures Jesus’ teachings.
This tradition of errors and misinterpretations, allows us to misunderstand Jesus so that we do not learn from Jesus that we cannot be good, and that our only hope lies in the mercy that Our Creator will show us if we show mercy to our brother’s and sisters. Instead we misunderstand Jesus in a way that allows us to believe we can gain Our Creator’s favor by performing religious rituals that our churches teach us. We try to forget that Jesus has often told us that religious rituals that do not lead us to do Our Creator’s will are meaningless to Him, and are meaningless to Our Creator. We try to forget that Jesus has often told us that he only cares about religious rituals if those rituals lead us to do what Our Creator wants us to do.
Though we need to learn from Jesus that we cannot be good, most churches teach people who belong to them just the opposite of this. Most churches teach people who belong to them that they can be good, and also often teach people who belong to them that they are good. Though Jesus says to us, “Judge not lest you be judged” (Mt 7:1 & Lk 6:37). Most churches encourage people who belong to them to judge. In fact judging is the primary activity of most churches. Most churches that we call Christian churches, “call Jesus Lord, but do not the will of Jesus’ father.” Most churches that we call Christian churches say to Jesus, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name?, and in your name cast out demons?, and in your name done many wonderful works?”, and on the day of judgement Jesus will say to people in these churches, “I never knew you, leave me, you workers of iniquity.” (Mt 7:21-23: see also Lk 6:46)
While there may be some good in many of these churches, the bottom line is that most churches that we call Christian churches, do not help most of their members learn how to follow Jesus. While many people in these churches probably have very good intentions, these churches are not doing the work Jesus commissioned His disciples to do. For most of us who call ourselves Christians, the primary difference Jesus makes in our lives is that thinking about Jesus leads us to often lie to ourselves so we can believe we are good, instead of seeing the truth about ourselves so we can have a chance of truly becoming good. We know this because we know that if as few as one tenth of one percent of the people in our world tried to always follow Jesus, then our world would be fundamentally transformed, and then the wounds of our world would start to heal. Whatever the reasons this is not happening, any of us who belong to a church that does not help us learn how to follow Jesus, must search elsewhere for guidance in following Jesus. People who discover that their church is not helping them learn how to follow Jesus, should not leave their churches though. If any of us belong to a church, then we should like and care for people in that church, and we should want to do what is best for those people. When we see that we need to search elsewhere for guidance in following Jesus, we should try to bring our church with us by trying to transform that church into a place that can help us learn how to follow Jesus.
Being part of a community in which people care about each other can be a good first step toward a better life; especially if people in that community know how to help each other. If we have not learned what Jesus teaches us, though, then we can only help other people in trivial and ultimately worthless ways. With Jesus, we can help each other receive Our Creator’s mercy, instead of Our Creator’s justice, and in his mercy Our Creator will give us all that we ask for.
The only church that can help us learn how we can follow Jesus is a church that teaches what Jesus taught: a church that teaches that people are weak, frail, and evil, as Jesus taught that people are weak, frail, and evil: a church of human weakness.
Because Jesus wants all people to come together as one in Him, all churches that become churches of human weakness, should also come together as one church. They should all come together as parts of ‘The Church of Human Weakness’. Each separate church that becomes a part of ‘The Church of Human Weakness’ should continue as a separate church on sundays, while all people who try to follow Jesus should come together in ‘The Church of Human Weakness’ on saturdays.
Sunday is the day of celebration; Saturday, the day of preparation.
On Sunday Jesus rose from the dead, and when Jesus rose, Jesus’ followers rose with Him. Sunday is the day of receiving rewards, but these rewards can only be received by people who prepare themselves to receive these rewards by learning how to follow Jesus before Sunday comes. “Blessed is the slave who is found doing his master’s will, when the Master comes.” (Lk 12:35-48)
Jesus died for us on a Friday.
Friday is when Jesus did the hardest part of the hard work that we cannot do for ourselves: Friday is when Jesus did the work that allows us to learn how we can win Our Creator’s favor. Jesus did the hardest part of His work on a Friday, and Jesus rose on a Sunday.
Saturday is the day of decision for us. Saturday is the day on which we must prepare ourselves if we hope to rise with Jesus on Sunday. If we have not spent Saturday learning how to follow Jesus, then on Sunday we will be on the outside looking in. And the greater Our Creator’s rewards are, the more strongly we will regret having wasted our Saturday.
Of course we must prepare ourselves to receive Our Creator’s mercy every day if we hope to receive His mercy, but the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection chooses saturday as the most important day of preparation for us.
We can start to learn how to follow Jesus either through independent study of His gospels, through membership in ‘The Church of Human Weakness’, or through membership in a sunday church that has become a church of human weakness, and that has joined in ‘The Church of Human Weakness.’ The leaders of a sunday church that has become a church of human weakness, will attend ‘The Church of Human Weakness’ on saturday to learn about Jesus and to build their faith in Jesus, and will then teach what they have learned, and will then try to impart faith they have gained, to people in their Sunday church.
Each church that joins, “The Church of Human Weakness”, should maintain all of its religious rituals and ceremonies just as they are. These churches should do this because religious rituals and ceremonies are matters of style, and in matters of style all people should follow whatever style they are most comfortable with. Different styles of religious practice work best for different people, and Jesus wants each person to use whatever style of religious practice will most help him or her reach the substance of doing what Our Creator wants us to do.
People who try to follow Jesus, should take part in rituals and ceremonies that help them follow Jesus, when they are in their sunday churches. This is a good thing for all of us to do, so long as we also learn how to follow Jesus, either in our saturday church, ”The church of human weakness”, or in a sunday church that has been transformed by it’s membership in “The church of human weakness”, into a church that teaches human weakness, frailty, and evil, as Jesus taught human weakness, frailty, and evil.
For nearly 2,000 years, people have been thinking up new ways of twisting Jesus’ words so they can more easily ignore Jesus when Jesus tells them to do things they don’t want to do. Many of these ways of twisting Jesus’ words have come down to each of us, and were taught to each of us at such a young age that they have become second nature to us. Because of this we all take part in twisting Jesus’ words without even realizing that we are doing so, and we almost never question the false assumptions about Jesus that lead us to do this.
This is the problem the church of human weakness seeks to address.
From the point of view of people in currently existing churches, “The Church of Human Weakness”, will be an ecumenical organization they will join to come together with many other churches, and will be an organization that will help all churches follow the true teachings of Jesus, and that will help people in all churches live as Jesus teaches us to live. Any church that teaches living as Jesus tells us to live, is welcome in the church of human weakness, even if that church is dedicated primarily to following another teacher, and even if people in that church do not call Jesus God.
Section 9.)
When Jesus tells us what Our Creator wants us to do, Jesus shows us that we cannot do what Our Creator wants us to do, because each of us will be unable to do many things Jesus tells us to do. Jesus also tells us often that we will often not be able to do what Our Creator wants us to do. Jesus tells us this when He says to His disciples, “Pray that you know no temptation Indeed the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Mt 26:41 & LK 22:46). Jesus tells us this when He tells us to pray to Our Heavenly Father, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (Mt 6:5-15 & Lk 11:2-4). Jesus is telling us to pray that we be delivered from the evil we would do if we were led into temptation. It is this evil we truly need to be delivered from. Evil that is done to us does us little harm, compared to evil we do; which does us great harm. When we do evil, we harden our hearts against the victims of our evil, and against all people we might want to do evil to in the future. By doing this we make it harder for ourselves to forgive other people when they do evil to us, and we make ourselves less likely to receive Our Creator’s forgiveness. Not receiving Our Creator’s forgiveness would do far greater harm to us than any evil other people could ever do. And Jesus tells us all to expect to do evil, and to plan on doing evil, when He says, “Use unrighteous mammon to make friends, so that when it fails, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.” (Luke 16:9). Jesus is telling us that we will try to live by unrighteous mammon, that when we try to live by unrighteous mammon, unrighteous mammon will fail us, and that we will only be received into everlasting habitations if we have used the fruits of our unrighteousness to make other people our friends; If, instead of trying to avoid other people because we fear their evil would corrupt our goodness, we see that we are evil, as they are evil, and we befriend them because their evil, like our evil, causes them to need help, as we need help.
Jesus tells us of rewards that will come to people who believe in Him, so we will try to believe in Him, so we will succeed in believing in Him whenever we are able to, and so that when we are not able to believe in Him, we will realize that because we cannot do what Our Creator wants us to do, we are in desperate need of Our Creator’s forgiveness. We are in need of this forgiveness because we should do what Our Creator wants us to do, and we should do what Our creator wants us to do because Our Creator has given us every ability we possess, and has given us our lives themselves, and because we should use gifts Our Creator has given us, as Our Creator wants us to use those gifts. Still, none of us will always forgive as we need be forgiven, because none of us will always be aware of how much punishment we will receive if Our Creator shows us justice instead of mercy. This will be so because the awareness of how much punishment we will receive if Our Creator does justice to us, frightens us, and because we will all refuse to see how much we need Our Creator’s forgiveness, whenever we are able to do so. The reason that the awareness of how much we need Our Creator’s forgiveness frightens us, is that none of us can always believe that Our Creator will show us mercy, if we show mercy to our brothers and sisters. Instead we all often believe that Our Creator will show us justice instead of mercy. The good news Jesus brings us: The news that Our Creator will show us mercy if we show mercy to our brothers and sisters. This news sounds too good to be true.
Can any person know if he or she has forgiven enough of the people who have trespassed against him or her, to receive Our Creator’s forgiveness? The answer is no. This is the primary reason that Jesus tells us not to judge. Jesus knows that none of us can judge accurately. Jesus says to us, “Judge not, lest you be judged” (Mt 7:2). The reason we must fear being judged is that we cannot be good. If we could judge accurately, though, then we would be able to be good, and then we would not need to fear Our Creator’s judgement. Then we would be able to say to Our Creator, “Go ahead judge me, I have nothing to hide.” We will never be able to say this, though, because we will never be able to judge accurately.
Jesus tells us often that we will not be able to judge accurately. One time that Jesus tells us this is when He says, “Why do you see the mote in your brother’s eye, but ignore the beam in your own? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me pull the mote out of your eye’, when you have a beam in your own? You hypocrite, first pull the beam out of your eye, then you will see clearly to take the mote out of your brothers eye.” (Mt 7:3-5, & Lk 6:41-42), Jesus tells us this again when He says, “The stone that the builders refuse, will be the head cornerstone.” (Lk 20:17), and Jesus tells us that our judgement will not be the same as God’s judgement, when He says, “The last will be first, and the first last.” (Mt 20:16). This tells us that people whom we would put last, are people whom God will put first, and that people whom we would put first, are people whom God will put last. Jesus told us that we will often be wrong if we judge that God has punished a person, when His disciples saw a man who had been blind from birth, and asked Jesus, “Who sinned? This man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus then answered, “Neither this man sinned, nor his parents. He is blind so that the works of God may be made manifest in him.” (Jn 9:1-3). What Jesus’ disciples had thought was a punishment, was actually a preparation for a reward. And Jesus tells us that we will be wrong if we judge that people who suffer greater misfortune than we do, have done greater evil than we have done. Jesus tells us this when He says to people who had told him about some Galileans whom the Roman government had killed, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were sinners above all other Galileans, because they suffered these things? I tell you they were not; Unless you repent, you will all perish as they perished. Or do you suppose that those eighteen people in Siloam who died when a tower fell on them, were debtors above all men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you they were not; Unless you repent, you will all perish as they perished.” (Lk 13:1-5). Because we cannot judge either other people or ourselves accurately, each of us must forgive people who trespass against us, as often as we can, and then we must hope that we have shown enough forgiveness to these people, to get Our Creator to show forgiveness to us.
We should not be bothered by the fact that we cannot judge whether or not Our Creator will forgive us for our trespasses against Him. We do not help ourselves when we try to judge this, but we instead do ourselves great harm whenever we try to judge whether or not any person will receive forgiveness: whether we try to judge ourselves, or try to judge other people. This is so because when we try to judge, we make ourselves less able to forgive people who trespass against us, as we need Our Creator to forgive us for our trespasses against Him.
Why we need Our Creator’s forgiveness.
Jesus tells us that Our Creator gives us all we have when He tells us to pray to Our Father, “Give us this day our daily bread.” (Mt 6:5-15 & Lk 11:2-4), Jesus tells us that Our Creator gives us our lives and every ability we posses, when He says, “Swear not at all, not even on your own head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your communication be, ‘yes yes, no no’, for whatever is more than these is evil.” (Mt 5:33-37), and Jesus tells us that we cannot do anything without gifts Our Creator gives us, when He says, “We must work the works of Him who sent me while it is day, night will come when no one can work.” (Jn 9:4). (Jesus is speaking of both the night that comes every 24 hours, and of the night that will come when the sun’s light goes out forever, at the end of the world.). Our Creator gives us the bread we must eat if we want to live, the heads we must use if we want to think, and the sun that lights the day, and that allows all people to live, and to work. Jesus tells us that we should use abilities Our Creator has given us to do what Our Creator wants us to do, when He says to us, “When you do all that you are commanded to do, do not expect thanks, but say instead, ‘we are unprofitable slaves. we have only done what we ought to have done.’” (Lk 17:9-10)
It is only when we see how much we need Our Creator’s forgiveness, that we will start to do what Our Creator wants us to do. It is only when we see how much we need Our Creator’s forgiveness, that we will start to forgive as we need be forgiven.
As long as we can convince ourselves that we are good, we will refuse to admit that we need Our Creator’s forgiveness. We will all do this because it is hard for us to believe that Our Creator truly will show us mercy, instead of justice. (even if we show mercy, instead of justice, to other people). We all fear that we need to be good to win Our Creator’s favor. The good news that Jesus tells us, sounds too good to be true. Because we fear that if we are not good, Our Creator will punish us for our evil, we convince ourselves that we can be good, and by doing so, we reject Our Creator’s mercy. Though we may believe Jesus when He tells us we will be judged with the judgment we judge with (Mt 7:2), We refuse to believe that if we judge justly, we will be doomed when Our Creator judges us justly. We believe instead, that we could be judged by the standards of justice, and be judged favorably. We are wrong to believe this. But in our pride we will not renounce this belief. We continually find ways to convince ourselves that what we do is not very bad (if we admit that it is bad at all), and will not anger Our Creator, but that what other people do is truly evil, and will bring down Our Creator’s wrath.
“Forgive if you would be forgiven” will not mean much to a person who thinks that he or she doesn’t need to be forgiven. Such a person says to Our Creator, “go ahead, judge me, I have nothing to hide.” If this person wants to be judged favorably, then he or she has everything to hide. If any of us want to be judged favorably, then we have everything to hide. If we judge other people justly, then Our Creator will judge us justly and we will be doomed by Our Creator’s just judgment. Justice is our enemy, and mercy our only hope.
Unless a person believes that Our Creator will show him or her mercy instead of justice, any person will refuse to admit that he or she is evil. That person will instead try not to see anything that would show that he or she is evil.
Jesus knows we will try to convince ourselves we are good because we believe we must be good to receive good things from Our Creator, and that we believe this because we believe Our Creator will show us justice instead of mercy , and Jesus knows that if we are able to convince ourselves we are good, then we will pretend we do not need Our Creator’s forgiveness, and then we will refuse to forgive our brothers and sisters, because we will think we do not need Our Creator to forgive us. Because He knows these things about us, Jesus tries to inspire us to have faith in Our Creator’s mercy, and Jesus shows us, and tells us, in many different ways, that we cannot be good. People who do not have faith in Our Creator’s mercy, will hate and fear Jesus, when Jesus tells them of their evil. Most of the time this will include all people. This is why Jesus says, “The World hates me because I testify that its works are evil.” (Jn 7:6-8). And this is also why Jesus says, “The light has come into the world, and men loved darkness, rather than light, because their works were evil. (Jn 3:19-21). Though we hate Jesus’ light, and though we love the darkness that it banishes, we should instead love Jesus’ light, and hate the darkness it illuminates. We should love Jesus’ light because, though we doubt Jesus, Jesus’ good news is true. Our Creator will show us mercy if we show mercy to our brothers and sisters. If we can sometimes make ourselves come to Jesus’ light, we will learn that its heat will warm us, not burn us. If we can overcome our fear and our hate, we will see that Our Creator truly will show us mercy, instead of justice. If we refuse to admit our evil, though, then we reject Our Creator’s mercy, and then we condemn ourselves to great punishment. And then there will be great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Jesus’ light will show us our evil if we use that light, and we should be grateful to have Jesus’ light to see by.
Jesus’ miracles illustrate the power of the faith He can inspire in us. These miracles depend on the faith Jesus inspires in people who receive them, and these miracles cannot occur if Jesus does not inspire great faith. It is the faith Jesus inspires that makes His miracles happen. Jesus makes this clear when He asks people who are about to receive miracles, “Do you believe that I can do what you ask”, and after hearing the answer ‘yes’, says, “As you believe, so be it.”, and we learn that Jesus’ miracles cannot occur where great faith does not exist, when the gospel writer Matthew says that when Jesus taught in His own country, “He did not many mighty works because of their unbelief.” (Mt 13:58). The greatest miracle Jesus can perform for any person also depends on the faith that Jesus inspires in that person. This miracle is the miracle of allowing a person to receive mercy from Our Creator, instead of Justice. This miracle can occur for all of us if Jesus inspires enough faith in us that we are able to believe that Our Creator will show us mercy if we show mercy to our brothers and sisters. This is so because if we believe this, then we will forgive people who do evil to us. But this miracle will not occur for any person who does not have enough faith to believe that Our Creator will show us mercy if we show mercy to our brothers and sisters.
Even with the faith Jesus can inspire, though, Jesus knows that none of us will always be able to forgive people who trespass against us. This will be so because none of us will always be able to believe that Our Creator will show us mercy instead of justice, if we show mercy to our brothers and sisters instead of justice. Can any person know if he or she has forgiven enough of the people who have trespassed against him or her, to receive Our Creator’s forgiveness? The answer is no. This is the primary reason that Jesus tells us not to judge: Jesus knows that none of us can judge accurately. Each of us must forgive people who trespass against us, as often as we can, and then must hope that we have shown enough forgiveness to these people, to get Our Creator to show forgiveness to us.
Saying we have faith in Jesus, is just another way of saying we are good, and saying we are sinners, is just another way of saying we have little faith. This is so because if we were able to have faith in Jesus, then we would do all that Jesus tells us to do, and then we would become good. Jesus tells us, though, that our faith is small, and that, because our faith is small, we will seldom do what He tells us to do. Because our faith is small, What Jesus wants all of us to do, is admit we are sinners.
Jesus wants us to admit this because when we admit we are sinners, we will forgive people who trespass against us, so that Our Creator will forgive us for our trespasses against Him.
When we are able to follow Jesus, we will not say that we have faith in Jesus. When we are able to follow Jesus, we will say instead, “Jesus, I will try to follow all of your teachings, so that I will be able to forgive people who do evil to me, because I want Our Creator to forgive me for evil I do to Him. Will I be able to forgive people who do evil to me, often enough to get Our Creator to forgive me for evil I do to Him? As you tell me to ‘Judge not’, I will try not judge myself as I try not to judge other people. I will try to leave all judgement to Our Creator. And I will fervently hope that I do forgive people who do evil to me, often enough to get Our Creator to forgive me for evil I do to Him.”
Jesus tells us that people who say they have faith in Him will often not do His father’s will, when he says, “Not all who say, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father. On the day of judgement, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name?, and in your name cast out demons?, and in your name done many wonderful works? And I will say to them, “I never knew you, leave me, you workers of iniquity.” (Mt 7:21-23: see also Lk 6:46). People who say ‘lord lord’ most loudly, will be the people who will do the will of Jesus’ Father least often. People who claim to have the greatest faith in Jesus, will be the people who will do the will of Jesus’ father least often. This will be so because people who claim to have faith in Jesus, are saying that they are good, and because people who believe they are good will not believe that they need Our Creator’s forgiveness, and will not forgive people who do evil to them, in order to receive Our Creator’s forgiveness.
Forgiving people who have done evil to us is not something we can do once. It is something we must do always. If we are doing what Jesus tells us to do at any moment, then we are forgiving as we need be forgiven, at that moment, And If we are not doing what Jesus tells us to do at any moment, then we are not forgiving as we need be forgiven, at that moment. The more often we forgive people who do evil to us, the more often Our Creator will forgive us for evil we do to Him. When we see our evil, Then we will forgive as we need be forgiven, and then we will be forgiven. Most of the time, though, most of us refuse to see our evil. And most of the time, most of us refuse to forgive as we need be forgiven. Though we should joyfully embrace the mercy Our Creator offers us, we reject that mercy, because we cannot believe that Our Creator truly will show us mercy, instead of justice.
Section 10.)
Jesus tells us, that when we help any person, we are helping Him, when He says, “When the Son of man comes in his glory, He will sit on a throne and all nations will be assembled before Him, and He will separate them into two groups. Then He will say to the group on His right, “Come, blessed ones. Inherit the kingdom that has been prepared for you since the foundation of the world. For I hungered and you gave me food, I thirsted and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you took me in, naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” Then these people will ask ‘when did we these things?’ and the king will say, “As you did to the least of my brothers, you did to me.” Then He will say to the group on His left, “Leave me, cursed ones. Go into the fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I hungered and you gave me no food, I thirsted and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not take me in, naked and you clothed me not, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then these people will ask, ‘When did we not do these things?’ and the king will say, “As you did not to the least of my brothers, you did not to me.” (Mt 25:31-46)
Jesus tells us to love each other, as He has loved us (Jn 13:34 & Jn 15:12)
Jesus tells us that God will reward us if we are humble and that God will punish us if we are proud when He says, “Whoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven, (Mt 18:4), when He says to His disciples, “The greater of you shall be your servant. (Mt 20:26-27, Mt 23:11, Lk 22:25-27), Whoever wishes to be great among you, he will be your servant. And whoever wishes to be first among you, he will be you slave.” and when He says to His disciples, “He who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and He who is chief, let him be your servant. For who is greater the servant or the one who is served. Isn’t the person who is served greater? But I am with you as a servant. (Lk 22:26-27). Jesus tells us again that God will reward humble people and will punish proud people when He says, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted (Mt 23:12, Lk 14:11, Lk 18:14).
Jesus tells us He wants us to come together with all other people, when He tells us to love all people who need our help as we love ourselves. Jesus tells us to do this when He tells us to love our neighbour as ourselves, and when He then answers a man who asks, “who is my neighbour?” by telling of a Samaritan who helped an injured Jew when other Jews would not help, and then asking, “Who was this injured man’s neighbour?” When the man whom Jesus had asked this of, answered, “He who showed mercy on the injured man”, Jesus replied, “Go and do likewise.”(Lk 10:25-37). This tells us that Jesus wants us to all come together because loving all people who need our help as we love ourselves is the action that will bring us all together. Jesus tells us again that He wants all people to come together in harmony in Him, when He says, “I came that I might save the world.” (Jn 12:47). Jesus does not say that He came to save a part of the world, or that He came to save some people who are in the world. Jesus tells us that he came to save the entire world. Jesus came that all people in the world might learn to forgive people who trespass against them, and might, by doing so, receive Our Creator’s forgiveness. If any of us does not learn to forgive those who trespass against us, then that person will not receive Our Creator’s forgiveness, and then that person will not be saved. Jesus will save the world, if the world will learn forgiveness from Jesus. Jesus says to us, “I am come to save that which is lost.” (Lk 19:10, & Mt 18:11). Because all people are lost this tells us that Jesus has come to save all people. Because Jesus wants all people to come together, followers of all religions can follow Jesus, without changing their religion. This tells us that Jesus’ teachings are not religious teachings, but are instead moral teachings that show us how we can receive all we need and all we ask for.
The fact that doing what Jesus tells us to do will bring us together as one with all people. This tells us that we are still in the process of being created. Our creation can only be complete after we have all come together as one. It is meaningless to ask why we have not been created so that doing what Our Creator wants us to do is easy for us, because we have not been created yet. Our world is like an oven in which each of is like a molecule of flout egg or water that is coming together with other molecules to form a loaf of bread, and difficulties we have in following Jesus are just part of what is necessary for us to come together. But these difficulties will seem small and meaningless when compared to the joy and fulfillment we will feel when our creation is complete. These difficulties and this joy are what Jesus is talking about when He says to his disciples, , “Beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues. And you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake. And brother will deliver brother up to death, and the father the child: and the children will rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all men for my name’s sake: but he who endures to the end will be saved.” Being saved will be joining with other people in the harmony that will be created when we all live as Jesus teaches us to live. (even if we learn to live as Jesus teaches us to live from someone other than Jesus.)
When one of the high priests of Jerusalem asked Jesus, ‘are you the Christ, the Son of God?’ Jesus answered, “You say that I am, nevertheless I say to you, you shall see me sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven.” (Mt26:63-66). These priests believed that if Jesus were not the Christ and the Son of God, He could not know what God wants us to do, so Jesus told these priests that He is with God and knows what God wants us to do. Jesus tells us that He knows what God wants us to do because that is what we need to know to live wisely. Jesus must have a special relationship with God if He will be sitting at God’s right hand, but Jesus never says he is the Christ or the Son of God, because it doesn’t matter to Him that we know if He is the Christ or the Son of God. If we accept that He knows what God wants us to do, and if we try to live as He teaches, then trying to know anything else about Jesus is a distraction it is unwise for us to take part in. Because Jesus knows what God wants us to do there is a good chance that He is the Christ and the Son of God, but trying to figure this out is a dangerous waste of time and energy. If Jesus cared that we knew if he was the Christ or the Son of God He would have told us about this. We know that most people who call Jesus the Son of God, seldom believe Jesus when He tells us that if we live as He teaches we will receive rewards or avoid punishments that will outweigh any suffering that comes to us because we follow Him. We know this because whenever any person believes that following Jesus will lead to rewards that will outweigh any suffering following Jesus leads to. Whenever any person believes this, that person will follow Jesus in order to receive rewards Jesus tells us of. Jesus knows we will seldom be able to do this because we are not capable of great faith. Jesus tells us this us this every time He says to us, “O you of little faith” (Mt 6:30, Mt 8:26, Mt 14:31, Mt 16:8, & Lk 12:28), and Jesus tells us again that our faith will be weak when He says to His disciples, “If your faith were as a grain of mustard seed, you could tell that mountain to move, and it would move.” (Mt 17:20). This tells us that unless a person can make a mountain move by telling it to move, that person does not have enough faith to fill the smallest seed Jesus knew of. Jesus says to us, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” Mt 26:41 & LK 22:46). Our inability to have great faith is the reason our flesh is weak. When we believe Jesus when He tells us that we will receive rewards that will more than make up for our suffering, then the desire of our flesh to avoid pain and to feel pleasure will lead us to do what Jesus tells us to do. It is not that we cannot endure current suffering to receive greater pleasure in the future that keeps us from following Jesus most of the time. It is that we do not believe that following Jesus will bring us future pleasure that will be greater than our current suffering most of the time. We want to imagine that the weakness of our flesh is not a sign of the weakness of our faith because we want to be able to say we have faith in Jesus even when we do not follow His teaching. This is just a way of trying to convince ourselves that we do not need Our Creator’s forgiveness, but that we deserve rewards from Our Creator because of our faith. Believing this allows us to believe we will receive things we want from Our Creator for our faith, not for forgiving people who trespass against us, even though Jesus says to us, “If you do not forgive men their trespasses against you, then neither will your father forgive you.” .” (Mt 6:9-15, see also Lk 6:37, and Mt 18:23-35). The truth about our faith is that our actions measure our faith. How often we follow Jesus’ teachings shows how strongly we believe Jesus. When we follow Jesus, then we believe Jesus. When we do not follow Jesus, then we do not believe Jesus. (Regardless of what we say about Jesus). Though we are capable of little faith we are capable of some faith, and it is when we do not believe Jesus when He tells us that following Him will lead to rewards that will outweigh the suffering it will lead to, that we displease Jesus, because it is this lack of faith that leads us not to do the will of His Father. Even though many people who lack this faith will call Jesus, Lord, many people who do this will still hear Jesus say to them, “leave me you workers of iniquity.”. (Mt 7:21-23: see also Lk 6:46)
What we say about our intended victim is what people who want to hurt us say about us, and is what our intended victim says about people he or she does violence to. It is easy to vilify our intended victims.
If Our Creator does not forgive us, then the hate in our hearts will make our lives cold, empty, and not worth living. No person with hate in his or her heart can know joy. If Our Creator forgives us, He will turn the hate in our hearts into love. If this happens, we will already have started to turn the hate in our hearts into love by forgiving people who have trespassed against us, in order to get Our Creator to forgive us. But without Our Creator’s help we cannot transform all the hate in our hearts. On our own we can only start to forgive. Our Creator must help us before we can forgive completely. When Our Creator does this, we will often not see His hand at work in our lives. If we forgive, often we will believe that the strength to forgive came solely from within ourselves. If we see that when we forgive we do so because Our Creator has given us the strength to forgive, then we will be ale to forgive more often and more completely, and then we will more fully understand what we owe Our Creator.
When Jesus says, “I came that I might save the world.” (Jn 12:47), Jesus is telling us that every person in the world can be saved if that person forgives people who trespass against him or her as often as our creator expects that person to forgive people who trespass against him or her, and that some people from every group and every place in the world will have the wisdom and the strength to forgive people who trespass against them. Not all people will have the wisdom and the strength to forgive, though, and people who do not forgive people who trespass against them, will not be saved, for Jesus says to us, “If you do not forgive people who trespass against you, then your father will not forgive you.” (Mt 6:9-15). None of us will know if we have the wisdom and the strength to forgive people who trespass against us, until we try to forgive. The desire to try to forgive people who trespass against us is a part of the wisdom people who are able to forgive have been given. Because of this even our efforts to forgive, come from Jesus. Still, it will seem as if these efforts come at least partially from within us, and feeling this way is a necessary part of following Jesus. While we realize that if we follow Jesus, we do so because of gifts He has given us, we must also sometimes think of ourselves as independent beings who choose whether or not we will follow Jesus.
Jesus tells us again that we will be treated very badly if we follow Him, when He says, “The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Satan, how much more shall they call those of his household.” (Mt 10:24-25, see also LK 6:40)
Jesus knows that we could easily believe that when we do good works we should hide our good works because we hear Him say, “Take care not to do your alms in front of people in order to be seen by them. If you do this you will receive no reward from your Father in the heavens” (Mt 6:01). This is why Jesus tells us not to hide what we do from other people when He says, “Let your light shine before men so they may see your good works and may glorify your Father in the heavens.” (Mt 5:16). Though we must never do our alms in front of other people in order that they see us, we must also not do our alms in private in order that other people don’t see us. With our good works as with our bad works it is a waste of energy to either try to make other people see us or to try to hide from other people. Our Creator will see all that we do, and compared to His opinion of us, the opinions other people have of us, and the actions other people take toward us mean next to nothing.
Jesus tells us often that if we try as hard as we can to forgive all people who trespass against us, then we will be able to forgive enough people who trespass against us, to get Our Creator to forgive us for evil we do to Him. Jesus tells us this when He says, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.” (Jn 6:35), when he says, “If any man thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes on me. Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” (Jn 7:37-38), when He says, “Labour not for the meat that perishes but for the meat that endures into everlasting life that the Son of man will give you.” (Jn 6:27), and when He says, “Whoever believes in the Son of man will not perish but will have eternal life.” (Jn 3:14-15) The bread of life that is Jesus, is forgiveness. The only way in which we can eat the bread that is Jesus, is by forgiving people who trespass against us; The only way in which we can seek God’s righteousness is by trying to forgive people who trespass against us, as we need God to forgive us; The only way in which we can labour for the meat that endures into everlasting life is by forgiving our brothers and sisters, as we need be forgiven. And if we believe in Jesus, then we will forgive people who trespass against us, so that Our Creator will forgive us for our trespasses against Him.
Jesus tells us again that if we try as hard as we can to forgive all people who trespass against us, then we will be able to forgive enough people who trespass against us, to get Our Creator to forgive us, when he says, “Take no thought for your life, for what you will eat or drink, or for what clothes you will wear. Your heavenly father knows you need these things. Instead, seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.”, (Mt 6:25-34 & Lk 12:22-34). And Jesus tells us we will receive all we ask for, when He says, “Ask, and it will be given you, seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, it will be opened.” (Mt 7:7-8 & Lk 11:9-10), “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” (Jn 14:14)
How can this be true when Jesus also says, “If you do not forgive men their trespasses, then your father will not forgive you.”? What would happen if a person who did not try to forgive all people who had trespassed against him or her? What would happen if such a person asked? Would that person receive all he or she asked for? The answer to this question is that a person who did not try to forgive all people who had trespassed against him or her, would not be able to ask. This is true in the same way that a person who had no throat and no mouth would not be able to speak. Forgiveness is the voice that allows us to ask. We know this because we know that if Our Father has not forgiven a person, then Our Father will not give that person all that he or she asks for.
All who wander in dark valleys and founder in currentless shallows
Arise and take the place that has been prepared for you
Walk in the light to the highest peak and ride the swell of the fullest wave
Blessed are the poor because yours is the kingdom
Blessed are those hungering now, for you will be filled
Blessed are you when men hate you, and separate you and reproach you for the sake of the son of man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for behold you have great reward in heaven for they did likewise to the prophets.
But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your comfort
Woe to you who have been filled, for you will hunger.
Woe to you who laugh now, because you will mourn and lament.
Woe to you when all men shall speak well of you, for your fathers spoke well of the false prophets. (Lk 6:20-26)
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they will reproach you and persecute you, and say every evil word about you, lying, for my sake. Rejoice and be glad, for so persecuted they the prophets before you. (Mt 5:3-12)
The spirit of the lord is upon me, therefore He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the broken in heart, to preach deliverance to captives, to give sight to the blind, to bring deliverance to those who have been crushed, to preach the acceptable year of the lord. (Lk 4:18)
Let the dead bury the dead. (Mt 8:22)
