© 1997 Leslie Wetherhead
© 1997 The Brotherhood of Man Library
from “Jesus and Ourselves” by Leslie Weatherhead
The first great gift we can bestow on others is a good example.
Morell
Man’s greatest spiritual jeopardy consists in partial progress, the predicament of unfinished growth: forsaking the evolutionary religions of fear without immediately grasping the revelatory religion of love. Modern science, particularly psychology, has weakened only those religions which are so largely dependent upon fear, superstition, and emotion. (UB 99:4.8)
Part 4 of The Urantia Book, “The Life of Jesus” was prepared by a commission of twelve midwayers, the leader of which states:
As far as possible I have derived my information from purely human sources. Only when such sources failed, have I resorted to those records which are superhuman. When ideas and concepts of Jesus’ life and teachings have been acceptably expressed by a human mind, I invariably gave preference to such apparently human thought patterns. (UB 121:8.12)
The book cited above, published in 1930, was one of the sources used by the midwayers. Ideas and phrases in the material from Weatherhead that follows is a source for the midwayers’ restatement “in modern phraseology” of a discourse by Jesus about principles to be used in the preaching of the gospel. The discourse commences on UB 149:6.1. Read together, we have an interesting example of the way in which human source material was used in The Urantia Book.
“There are at least four ways in which one man can impose his will on another. The first and crudest is by the use of physical force, supposing one man is stronger than the other.”
“The second is by what we call a powerful personality. With this one man can often override another’s objection and opposition by the sheer force of his magnetic, energetic personality. We all know people whom it is hard to resist for this reason.”
“The third method is by a kind of intellectual superiority. We know people who overwhelm us with arguments why we should do what they wish, pressing reasons upon us one after another, till our mind, unable, on the spur of the moment, to examine them, acquiesces through the sheer weight of evidence produced.”
“The fourth way is by an appeal to the emotions of the person we wish to influence. It may be the emotion of their admiration for ourselves when a person says, “I’ll do anything for you”—or by an appeal to fear or pity. Probably all these four ways have a value, but, if unduly pressed, they imply disrespect to the personality of the other. Let us see how Christ regarded these four methods”
“First of all, think of physical power. Jesus must have been in touch with resources of physical power which no one else could tap. The lure of the third temptation reveals that it was possible that He might have used that power to dethrone Caesar, set up a new government, new rule, new order. The power of the temptation lay in the contemplation of what force might be made to achieve. He could end oppression, He could give men justice; and it might be argued that, if His aim were good, the use of this force would have been legitimate. Yet the striking thing is that, out of respect for men’s personality, Jesus will not try to win even a righteous cause by force. . . ”
“Turn, secondly, to the method we call personal psychic force. Think to what a degree Jesus possessed this! A man will leave his work, his home, his friends, at two words from the Master: “Follow Me.” He turns on a crowd hustling Him toward a precipice, down which they intend to cast Him, and, because of the light in His eye and the majesty of this bearing, His persecutors fall back on either side, not one of them daring to touch Him. Are we surprised to hear one man say to Him, “I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest”?..”
“We must not let our conceptions of the “Gentle Jesus,” beautiful and true as these are, blind us to the fact that when He was on earth, and His personality was manifested in a human body which made it easily apprehended, the impact of that personality on others was all but overwhelming. By that I do not mean that men were all attracted.”
“There happened with Jesus what always happens where you have a powerful personality. There were few neutrals. Men were for or against. And they were swayed, not by examining the issue in all its bearings and making a personal choice which recognized all the implications, but were swept into one or other camp by those almost electrical currents of psychic energy which streamed from Him.”
“So crowds surged round Him, and would have died for Him. Others withdrew to weave their corporate suspicion, hate, and fear into a net strong enough to drag Him to death. Jesus knew this would happen. As He said, He came not to bring the peace of smug, self-satisfied complacency, but the sword of division that severs sometimes the most close-knit intimacies of life.”
“Knowledge of these facts, and respect for man’s personality, made Him stand away from men in a way that sometimes appears to us crushing or cold. In reality, He is making reverent room for the sanctities of human life and the freedom of human choice.”
“Turn, thirdly, to the method of mental superiority. How easy it would have been for Jesus to take an attitude expressed in the words of those who say to us, “Well, I know better than you do.””
“Might He not have brought to bear on His followers such an enormous weight of evidence that they would have been mentally unable to acquiesce in anything else but His will, or in any other way but His way ?”
“It is most impressive to notice that Jesus never crushed men’s minds by the sheer weight of argument, which they had no trained faculty to disentangle or co-ordinate with the rest of their mental background. He led them quietly step by step, so that the mind could always look back and see the steps it had taken. It is the difference between being whirled into a new experience by an escalator and walking quietly upstairs. . . ”
“Consider, fourthly, the method of appealing to emotion. Emotion is a much misunderstood thing. To some people it is a thing to be dreaded and distrusted. Do not let us despise it. No venture of the soul is made without it. A man cannot fall in love with Christ (which is what being a Christian means) without emotion, any more than he can fall in love with his beloved without emotion.”
“Jesus used emotion again and again. Surely one cannot read His words without being stirred to the very depths. It seems to me that the point is that He never asked a man to make a decision while his personality was swept by emotional force.”
“If, in cooler moments, intellect and will confirmed emotional desire, then a man was won; but if a man is only won emotionally, then only a third of his personality is captured, and when his emotion cools, his allegiance will die with it.”
“That is why Jesus sent that impulsive disciple home to think about his desire to follow, and that is why it seems to me a mistake, if when men’s emotions are roused, they are swept into some inquiry-room and required, then and there, to make some great decision. Would it not be better to wait until intellect and will confirm emotional desire and the whole man were won for God, even if the number of decision-cards signed were less ?”
“I have been deeply impressed by the way in which Jesus might have won the young ruler by an appeal on the emotional side—Jesus’ arm through his, and such a word as, “Don’t turn away like that,” and the thing was done.”
“When Judas shuffled across the floor of the Upper Room to do his dreadful deed, Jesus, by a single sentence appealing to the emotion of pity, might have saved both Himself and Judas, but in both cases Jesus let men go.”
“He used emotion—for instance, He spoke words which kindled fear as no other words can kindle that emotion—but, out of a divine respect for human personality, He never pressed for decision while emotion was at its height, nor coerced a submission by an appeal to admiration, or pity, or fear.”
“All this has, as I suggested, a twofold meaning. First, the very nature of God is revealed, for “he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” God might use physical force. He might bring His angels and sweep through our cities until every man was beaten to his knees. God could use psychic force.”
“We who have prayed that we might see His face should remember that one of these days He might conceivably answer our prayer, and, in the splendor of that tremendous Presence, what would be left of our faculty for judgment, and decision, and choice ? We should be swept into allegiance.”
“God could use mental force. He could bring evidence of His reality and power which would break down the mind by the weight of its truth. One of the most amazing signs of His respect for our personality lies in the fact that He has put us in a world in which the evidence against Him is far more obvious than the evidence in His favor.”
“God might use emotional power. If a modern evangelist can herd people by the hundred into an inquiry-room, could not God Himself sweep our being with the fires of an emotion that would break down all our resistance ?”
“But let us note, secondly, that we must not call God cold and distant; we must not complain that He does not vindicate Himself sufficiently, when His restraint is a sign of His very respect for our personality. He has eschewed all ways of force pressed to excess in order that our choice of His way may be wholly our own.”
“I have seen a picture called “Victory” which shows a hill-top, a standard floating proudly from a flag-staff, a captain standing with uplifted sword among the remnant of his followers, and the bodies of the beaten enemy lying around.”
“Many would like to picture in their minds the victory of God like that. They think of Him with all His enemies under His feet. I doubt if ever they will be. For in the heaven of heavens they will be standing by His side, with you and me, captured, bound, broken down—by a willing response to love.”
“His victory is seen on another hill-top, on which is erected no proud standard floating in the breeze, but just a wooden cross. There is no captain standing with uplifted weapon. The Captain of our salvation hangs nailed thereon, and a weapon has been driven into His side.”
“Even here He does not hang thus to win a mere emotional pity, but He reveals the long, quiet, suffering, patient ways of God. The fact that humbles me to the dust and overwhelms me with shame is that there stands on the threshold of the human life the eternal Christ, the Prince of Glory, and in His hand are all the force I have described.”
“Between Him and the object of His passionate longing is only the frail barrier of the human will. If He lifted so much as a little finger, our paltry defenses would go down in ruins, but, because of this tremendous respect for our personality, which reveals the eternal restraint of God, this great Lover of the soul will never be its burglar, but will wait on the threshold until we ourselves rise and let Him in.”
““Behold,” He says, “I stand at the door and knock.” What a respect for personality. What a divine restraint. What a majestic love. I listen down the corridor of the years for any sound of the dread trumpet of an angel summoning men to repentance. I only hear the voice of a Baby crying in a manger, and a whisper from lips tortured by pain, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.””
[Acknowledgements are due to Matthew Block for drawing attention to this source material, and for supplying the extracts from Weatherhead’s book]