The Later Childhood of Jesus

124:4.1This was an event­ful year in Je­sus’ life. He con­tin­ued to make prog­ress at school and was in­de­fati­ga­ble in his study of na­ture, while in­creas­ingly he pros­e­cuted his study of the meth­ods whereby men make a liv­ing. He be­gan do­ing reg­u­lar work in the home car­pen­ter shop and was per­mit­ted to man­age his own earn­ings, a very un­usual ar­range­ment to ob­tain in a Jew­ish fam­ily. This year he also learned the wis­dom of keep­ing such mat­ters a se­cret in the fam­ily. He was be­com­ing con­scious of the way in which he had caused trou­ble in the vil­lage, and hence­forth he be­came in­creas­ingly dis­creet in con­ceal­ing ev­ery­thing which might cause him to be re­garded as dif­fer­ent from his fel­lows.

124:4.2Through­out this year he ex­pe­ri­enced many sea­sons of un­cer­tainty, if not ac­tual doubt, re­gard­ing the na­ture of his mis­sion. His nat­u­rally de­vel­op­ing hu­man mind did not yet fully grasp the re­al­ity of his dual na­ture. The fact that he had a sin­gle per­son­al­ity ren­dered it dif­fi­cult for his con­scious­ness to rec­og­nize the dou­ble ori­gin of those fac­tors which com­posed the na­ture as­so­ci­ated with that self­same per­son­al­ity.

124:4.3From this time on he be­came more suc­cess­ful in get­ting along with his broth­ers and sis­ters. He was in­creas­ingly tact­ful, al­ways com­pas­sion­ate and con­sid­er­ate of their wel­fare and hap­pi­ness, and en­joyed good re­la­tions with them up to the be­gin­ning of his pub­lic min­istry. To be more ex­plicit: He got along with James, Miriam, and the two younger (as yet un­born) chil­dren, Amos and Ruth, most ex­cel­lently. He al­ways got along with Martha fairly well. What trou­ble he had at home largely arose out of fric­tion with Joseph and Jude, par­tic­u­larly the lat­ter.

124:4.4It was a try­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for Joseph and Mary to un­der­take the rear­ing of this un­prece­dented com­bi­na­tion of di­vin­ity and hu­man­ity, and they de­serve great credit for so faith­fully and suc­cess­fully dis­charg­ing their pa­ren­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. In­creas­ingly Je­sus’ par­ents re­al­ized that there was some­thing super­hu­man res­i­dent within this el­dest son, but they never even faintly dreamed that this son of prom­ise was in­deed and in truth the ac­tual cre­ator of this lo­cal uni­verse of things and be­ings. Joseph and Mary lived and died with­out ever learn­ing that their son Je­sus re­ally was the Uni­verse Cre­ator in­car­nate in mor­tal flesh.

124:4.5This year Je­sus paid more at­ten­tion than ever to mu­sic, and he con­tin­ued to teach the home school for his broth­ers and sis­ters. It was at about this time that the lad be­came keenly con­scious of the dif­fer­ence be­tween the view­points of Joseph and Mary re­gard­ing the na­ture of his mis­sion. He pon­dered much over his par­ents’ dif­fer­ing opin­ions, of­ten hear­ing their dis­cus­sions when they thought he was sound asleep. More and more he in­clined to the view of his fa­ther, so that his mother was des­tined to be hurt by the re­al­iza­tion that her son was grad­u­ally re­ject­ing her guid­ance in mat­ters hav­ing to do with his life ca­reer. And, as the years passed, this breach of un­der­stand­ing widened. Less and less did Mary com­pre­hend the sig­nif­i­cance of Je­sus’ mis­sion, and in­creas­ingly was this good mother hurt by the fail­ure of her fa­vorite son to ful­fill her fond ex­pec­ta­tions.

124:4.6Joseph en­ter­tained a grow­ing be­lief in the spir­i­tual na­ture of Je­sus’ mis­sion. And but for other and more im­por­tant rea­sons it does seem un­for­tu­nate that he could not have lived to see the ful­fill­ment of his con­cept of Je­sus’ be­stowal on earth.

124:4.7Dur­ing his last year at school, when he was twelve years old, Je­sus re­mon­strated with his fa­ther about the Jew­ish cus­tom of touch­ing the bit of parch­ment nailed upon the door­post each time on go­ing into, or com­ing out of, the house and then kiss­ing the fin­ger that touched the parch­ment. As a part of this rit­ual it was cus­tom­ary to say, “The Lord shall pre­serve our go­ing out and our com­ing in, from this time forth and even forever­more.” Joseph and Mary had re­peat­edly in­structed Je­sus as to the rea­sons for not mak­ing im­ages or draw­ing pic­tures, ex­plain­ing that such cre­ations might be used for idol­a­trous pur­poses. Though Je­sus failed fully to grasp their pro­scrip­tions against im­ages and pic­tures, he pos­sessed a high con­cept of con­sis­tency and there­fore pointed out to his fa­ther the es­sen­tially idol­a­trous na­ture of this ha­bit­ual obei­sance to the door­post parch­ment. And Joseph re­moved the parch­ment af­ter Je­sus had thus re­mon­strated with him.

124:4.8As time passed, Je­sus did much to mod­ify their prac­tice of re­li­gious forms, such as the fam­ily prayers and other cus­toms. And it was pos­si­ble to do many such things at Naz­a­reth, for its syn­a­gogue was un­der the in­flu­ence of a lib­eral school of rab­bis, ex­em­pli­fied by the renowned Naz­a­reth teacher, Jose.

124:4.9Through­out this and the two fol­low­ing years Je­sus suf­fered great men­tal dis­tress as the re­sult of his con­stant ef­fort to ad­just his per­sonal views of re­li­gious prac­tices and so­cial ameni­ties to the es­tab­lished be­liefs of his par­ents. He was dis­traught by the con­flict be­tween the urge to be loyal to his own con­vic­tions and the con­sci­en­tious ad­mo­ni­tion of du­ti­ful sub­mis­sion to his par­ents; his su­preme con­flict was be­tween two great com­mands which were up­per­most in his youth­ful mind. The one was: “Be loyal to the dic­tates of your high­est con­vic­tions of truth and righ­teous­ness.” The other was: “Honor your fa­ther and mother, for they have given you life and the nur­ture thereof.” How­ever, he never shirked the re­spon­si­bil­ity of mak­ing the nec­es­sary daily ad­just­ments be­tween these realms of loy­alty to one’s per­sonal con­vic­tions and duty to­ward one’s fam­ily, and he achieved the sat­is­fac­tion of ef­fect­ing an in­creas­ingly har­mo­nious blend­ing of per­sonal con­vic­tions and fam­ily obli­ga­tions into a mas­ter­ful con­cept of group sol­i­dar­ity based upon loy­alty, fair­ness, tol­er­ance, and love.