© 2014 Michel Benoît
© 2014 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| On freedom and the mode of evolution of civilization | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 68 — Autumn 2014 | Quiz Maxien n°19 The answers |
The global emotion at the death of Nelson Mandela shows how much we need prophets - how cruelly we lack them. How small they seem next to them, these political leaders to whom we entrust power - so what should they do with it?
Three prophets - Mandela, Gandhi, Martin Luther King -, to whom we should add the Dalai Lama and Aung San Suu Khy, were visionary apostles of non-violence and forgiveness. All converted to these values in isolation, dungeon or exile. As if the solitude of being sidelined was a necessary condition for the deepening that was theirs. As if it was necessary to be condemned to the silence of the shadows in order to allow the end of hatred and the necessary unity of the human race to be born within oneself, then proclaim to the world, around a few very simple values. But which go against the grain of the irrepressible movement of societies.
Stubborn swimmers, they went up against opposing currents. Did they change the mighty course of the river - selfishness, militarism, violence, hatred? No. After Gandhi, India was torn between religions and castes, it became a nuclear power. After M.L. King, America remained the world’s leading military power, intervening everywhere to protect its economic interests - business and big money. After Mandela, tension remained between blacks and whites in South Africa. The Dalai Lama was unable to prevent the genocide of the Tibetan soul. What will Aung San Suu Kyi do if she comes to power?
What they have in common is the non-violence that the 20th century seems to have discovered with them. However, they were not the first. In Memoirs of an Ordinary Jew, I showed that Jesus was the first non-violent person in human history. Not only because he refused to ally himself with the Zealots, who in his time advocated armed action to drive out the Roman occupier. But because he clearly and explicitly taught the refusal to let oneself be drawn into any spiral of violence. “If someone takes your coat, [do not retaliate but] give your shirt as well. If someone forces you to go a kilometer, go ten. And if someone strikes you on one cheek, offer the other.” To Peter, who draws his sword to defend himself at the moment of arrest, he shouts: “Put your sword back in its sheath! Whoever practices violence will perish by violence.”
He found this doctrine between the lines in some of the Jewish prophets who preceded him. But none of them ever formulated it so clearly. None made it the heart of their teaching, the rudder of their life, allowing themselves to be condemned without resistance rather than calling for an insurrection of their followers - which would have been possible for Jesus, and of course ineffective. His life and death left an indelible mark on human history because he knew how to link together the refusal of violence, the forgiveness of offenses, universal compassion, attention to the smallest of this world, the demand for justice. But above all a new, revolutionary approach to a “God” whom he calls Abba, little dad. This man remains largely unknown to Christianity. Why? Because he was very quickly transformed into the Messiah - that is to say Christ - then into God.
Would Jesus have had the worldwide audience that Christ had? Probably not.
If he had not been transformed into Jesus Christ, the second person of a divine Trinity, who would have spoken of him? An obscure Jewish prophet, crucified like a criminal? What would his posterity have been? What mark would he have left on the planet? All modern prophets, from Gandhi to Mandela, have been profoundly influenced by the personality and teaching of the man Jesus. In the era of globalization, their message of non-violence and forgiveness is broadcast and heard everywhere. When they disappear, we realize what we are missing.
It is that by transforming Jesus into Christ and God, the first Christian generation could not hide the immense personality of this man, and the revolutionary force of his message. Both still permeate the gospels. The work of exegetes - my work after others - has been and remains to free the figure of Jesus from the religious and esoteric make-up with which he was covered by his power-hungry successors. The strength of the institutions in place, the need for religious myths are such that we are rarely heard. The man Jesus will not replace Christ-God in the conscience and practice of the Churches that claim to be his followers.
What does it matter, since Mandela, Gandhi, and others have taken up the baton of non-violence, forgiveness and reconciliation. What they lack, what Jesus had so well managed to place at the heart of his teaching, is the clear, explicit illumination of the God - Abba at the center of their message. A “God” of compassion and forgiveness, without whom none of the values for which they fought would have meaning. Jesus, the luminous unknown, continues as best he can to illuminate a planet desperate for lack of hope.
Michael Benoit
| On freedom and the mode of evolution of civilization | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 68 — Autumn 2014 | Quiz Maxien n°19 The answers |