Jesus: A Biography From a Believer. (14 page)

He also taught—and this is the fourth commandment—the need for love in human relationships, at all times and in every situation. “Love” was a word often on his lips, whether it be the love of God or the love of other human beings. This love had nothing to do with lust, which was a form of self-love, but neither was it entirely disembodied or spiritual. It was emotional, binding body and spirit, and expressing itself in countless ways. What Jesus tried to do, in his life and ministry, was to show love in action: in noticing, in listening, in questioning, in comforting and helping, in curing and making whole, in uniting and reconciling, in all the activities of a busy teacher’s life but also in private conversations and even secret encounters. The four Gospels form an exemplary manual of love, culminating in what Jesus himself classified as the greatest act of love, the giving of one’s own life for others. You cannot lay down laws of love. What you can do is to show it. That is what Jesus did. Happily, his words and actions were recorded in the multifocus vision for four very different evangelists. So we have a pattern to follow. And in the study and imitation of Jesus we have the best means to carry out his fourth commandment.

The fifth commandment of Jesus’s life concerns mercy. We are to show mercy just as God shows it to us. It is an emotional word, like “love”—with which it is intimately connected. It is hard to define, though instantly recognizable when exercised. It is something which cannot be done to excess and is significant even in its minutest expression. Mercy is grace. It is undeserved. It is something we pray for and give thanks for. Jesus says that if you get the glorious chance to show mercy, do so, without forethought or afterthought, without reason or logic, not expecting thanks or even repentance, not to accomplish something in the way of social or personal reform, simply for its own sake. Jesus was not a man to compose perfect codes of law or a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The idea of the Rights of Man was alien to him. He did not believe in Rights, or even in rights. He was more inclined to believe in duties, though not in Duties. Mercy transcended all these categories. No one had a right to it. And by its nature it was exercised freely, not as a duty. It was a marvelous thing: a form of moral poetry. When we show mercy spontaneously, gladly, freely, instantly, not thoughtlessly but unthinkingly and happily, we behave not just in kingly fashion but like God himself—it is the best way to show we are made in his image. Jesus was familiar with two texts from the book of Ecclesiasticus: “For the Lord is full of compassion and mercy, longsuffering, and very pitiful, and forgiveth sins” (2:11) and “We will fall into the hands of the Lord, and not into the hands of men: for as his majesty is, so is his mercy” (2:18). However, Jesus in his New Testament was aiming to complete and replace the old: to make his new commandments immediate and relevant and exciting. So he sought to make human beings exercise mercy after the manner of a king, and of God himself. And in doing so he had an impact, over the following two millennia, greater than that of any code, or treatise, or jurisprudence, on the way those who err are treated by their fellow men and women. In the crown of modernity, mercy is one of the brightest jewels among societies which have earned the right to wear it.

Jesus pushed virtues like mercy as far as they could go, but he was not an extremist. On the contrary, all the evidence of the Gospels shows the balance of his life, the faultless way in which he steered sensibly between egregious positions. He was a private man but not a hermit. He could be solitary but only for brief periods. He liked company in moderation. He talked—he had much to say—but he said it succinctly, and he knew when to ask questions and when to be silent. He was equable but could express indignation when required. He could weep, but he never despaired. He could laugh—though we are never explicitly told so—but he laughed with, not at. He was mocked, but he never mocked. He was struck, and he turned the other cheek. In an age of fury and loathing, when religious extremism held sway, he was a difficult man to dislike, let alone hate. And if, in the end, the unbalanced men hated him enough to kill him, it was precisely for his equanimity. A careful reading of the Gospels shows us the man who always kept his head (if not his life) when others were losing theirs. They teach us patience, forbearance, self-control, calmness, serenity, the pursuit and maintenance of quiet amid the storms of life. For more than two thousand years this has proved a valuable lesson to those individuals and societies intelligent enough to learn it.

Balance, then, is the sixth new commandment. And it is linked to the seventh: the cultivation of an open mind. Jesus’s life and death were a struggle against those whose minds were closed. He disliked bigotry in any form and spoke out against it constantly. It was to be found among the religious establishment of his day: the Temple men especially, and the leaders of the sects, such as the Pharisees and Sadducees. Bigotry sprang from legalism, adherence to the letter of the law and its narrow-minded interpretation. It is significant that Jesus’s listeners said he spoke in exactly the opposite way to the scribes. They meant he was constantly using his eyes and his wits, his imagination and his intelligence, to take in fresh knowledge. Luke quotes him exclaiming, “Woe unto you, lawyers, for ye have taken away the key of knowledge” (11:52). Jesus kept his eyes open to take in what he saw in daily life, and his ears open to listen to what men and women said. That was essentially linked to a mind open to new experiences and ideas. The word “open,” like “light,” was blessed in his vocabulary. He commended it to humanity. In the two millennia since he was crucified, the world has improved itself insofar as it has kept its mind open. All the ameliorative aspects of the early church, in its overthrow of paganism; Christianity, in all its attempts to create a truly religious society; the Renaissance, in its recovery of what was best in antiquity; the Reformation, in its redemption of apostolic virtue; the scientific revolution, in its adoption of experiment and verification; the Enlightenment, in its quest for exact knowledge; and modern reformist societies, in their seeking to improve the lot of humble men, women, and children, have succeeded when their leaders kept open minds and failed when they succumbed to dogma and “correctness.”

Jesus constantly emphasized that dogmatic beliefs, bigotry, and the insistence that there is only one “correct” way of doing, thinking, and talking—as prevalent in his society as in ours—are the exact opposite of truth. The pursuit of truth, whole and unabridged, simple and pure, unadorned by sectarian usage, unstained by passion, is the most valuable of human activities. It is the eighth new commandment. “Truth” is another key word in Jesus’s vocabulary: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). The saying cannot be too often quoted and pondered. The truth is both God’s truth and truth in nature. Truth is found by going God’s way, and with the grain of the natural world, not against it. Jesus loved the natural world. That is one reason why, when he wanted to think intensely and pray most earnestly, he went into the desert or up into the mountains, where nature is at its most severe and in its raw state. A huge range of his images were taken directly from nature. It formed the parameters of his poetry. Nature, in whole and in part, was the metaphor of his discourse. It was created, and therefore in a sense sacred. All was minutely and affectionately cataloged in God’s providence: “Are not five sparrows sold for two far-things, and not one of them is forgotten before God?” (Lk 12 :6). Jesus loved nature because he loved truth, and to go against nature was to defy the truth. It followed that all human enterprises should go with the grain of nature, not against it. He saw nature as providential, orderly, satisfying, and beautiful, and his constant references to the growth of organic things (Mk 4 : 18, 26-28, 31ff., 13 : 28; Lk 13 : 8, 21; Jn 15 : 2-4) and the habits of animals (Mt 6:26, 7:15, 10:16; Lk 13:34; Jn 10:3-5, 10:12) testify to his love of watching the creative regularity of God expressing itself in the natural world. For humans to recklessly and senselessly damage nature, whether organic or inorganic, was to trespass. It was for humanity to inhabit, use, preserve, and protect the world as God intended in his providential plan. That was the meaning of truth to nature, and being true to nature is the eighth new commandment.

The ninth new commandment concerns power, its exercise, and the respect due to the powerless. Jesus had at his disposal limitless power and, as his conduct during the temptations and thereafter throughout his ministry showed, he was careful always to exercise it with restraint and moderation, with mercy, pity, and love. His life is a model of the judicious use of power and, by contrast, his death is a cruel and catastrophic example of its abuse. Everything to do with power is rehearsed in the life and death of Jesus, and he himself, first in his miracles and then in his sufferings, is the archetype of the all-powerful and the powerless. In the thousands of years since he lived and died, the rulers of the earth and those who suffer from their distortions of power have been able to turn to the Gospels for a message of guidance, on the one hand, and hope, on the other. The Crucifixion is the nemesis of worldly power, and the Resurrection is the upsurge of the powerless from the depths. No handbook of political theory, no blueprint for the distribution and use of power, no analysis of its abuses or plan for their avoidance or correction, can add anything substantial to the story of Jesus and power, as told by the evangelists. What we need to know, and avoid, is all to be found therein, and any set of political and constitutional arrangements which does not place respect for the powerless at its center is bound to offend against truth and love.

The tenth and last of the new commandments, which we find in Jesus’s words, actions, and sufferings, is: show courage. The particular form of courage which Jesus displayed, and exhorted his followers to show, is courage not merely in resisting but in enduring wrong. He called his disciples to a life of meekness—that is, restrained strength, the high courage of endurance of pain and persecution, a sustained heroism in the face of iniquity, and a dogged persistence in proclaiming the truth at all costs. Jesus told his followers: “In your patience possess ye your souls” (Lk 21 : 19) and “[Y]e shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved” (Mt 10 : 22). Jesus expected his followers to show courage, and he showed it himself: the special courage of one who knows exactly the suffering ahead and is afraid of it, but accepts it nonetheless. He told his disciples to take up their crosses and showed how it ought to and could be done. Jesus was God and man, and the Crucifixion is the story of the exercise of divine courage in a frail human body. That is what we are commanded to aspire to, and this courage in imitation of Jesus is as much needed today as ever, and in as short supply as it was in his time. All the more reason, then, why this final commandment should be understood plainly, and followed faithfully.

 

The new commandments which Jesus left behind him were the moral and social framework of the Christianity he founded and his followers brought into existence—in all its better aspects, that is. Gradually, over the centuries, the salient virtues of the message Jesus conveyed to the people of his land percolated through society, leaving precious traces of love and neighborliness, mercy and forgiveness, courage in suffering and faith in goodness. In our own age, the early decades of the twenty-first century, we feel that our own society, ideally at least, is free and open, democratic and representative, living under a rule of law which is progressive and enlightened.

In fact, human progress has proved an illusion as often as not. In many ways our society is no better organized and led than in those weary days two millennia ago when men like Herod and Pilate ruled. Insofar as we have improved—in the way we look after the poor, the sick, the infirm, the powerless; in our treatment of children; in moral education and training; in penology and the redressing of grievances; in the effort to spread material welfare and to encourage people to show kindness to one another and help their neighbors in difficult times—these improvements have come about because we have had the sense, the sensibility, the intelligence, and the pertinacity to follow where Jesus led. If goodness has a place in our twenty-first-century world, it is because Jesus, by his words and actions, showed us how to put it there. No other man in history has had this effect over so long a time, over the whole of the earth’s surface, and over such a range of issues.

But, of course, Jesus was God as well as man. We now turn to the tragic but ultimately glorious events which displayed his superhuman qualities and vindicated his divinity.

T
HE EVENTS LEADING UP to the Crucifixion of Jesus, as described in the four Gospels, were complicated, and it is not surprising there are minor discrepancies. One was written by an eyewitness, and the other three were based on eyewitnesses’ observations. There is unanimity on all the essential points. This is remarkable, for there is more agreement in the sources about the death of Jesus than there is about the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Roman senate less than a century before, despite the fact that Caesar was a world-famous figure, and the senate house the governing center of the known universe. The death of Jesus the man is a tragic story. It is well authenticated in nearly all the details, and in describing it, I am conflating all four accounts to produce as complete and truthful a version as possible.