The Interlude Visit to Jerusalem

147:4.1On the evening of this same Sab­bath day, at Beth­any, while Je­sus, the twelve, and a group of be­liev­ers were as­sem­bled about the fire in Laz­a­rus’s gar­den, Na­than­iel asked Je­sus this ques­tion: “Mas­ter, al­though you have taught us the pos­i­tive ver­sion of the old rule of life, in­struct­ing us that we should do to oth­ers as we wish them to do to us, I do not fully dis­cern how we can al­ways abide by such an in­junc­tion. Let me il­lus­trate my con­tention by cit­ing the ex­am­ple of a lust­ful man who thus wickedly looks upon his in­tended con­sort in sin. How can we teach that this evil-in­tend­ing man should do to oth­ers as he would they should do to him?”

147:4.2When Je­sus heard Na­than­iel’s ques­tion, he im­me­di­ately stood upon his feet and, point­ing his fin­ger at the apos­tle, said: “Na­than­iel, Na­than­iel! What man­ner of think­ing is go­ing on in your heart? Do you not re­ceive my teach­ings as one who has been born of the spirit? Do you not hear the truth as men of wis­dom and spir­i­tual un­der­stand­ing? When I ad­mon­ished you to do to oth­ers as you would have them do to you, I spoke to men of high ide­als, not to those who would be tempted to dis­tort my teach­ing into a li­cense for the en­cour­age­ment of evil-do­ing.”

147:4.3When the Mas­ter had spo­ken, Na­than­iel stood up and said: “But, Mas­ter, you should not think that I ap­prove of such an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of your teach­ing. I asked the ques­tion be­cause I con­jec­tured that many such men might thus mis­judge your ad­mo­ni­tion, and I hoped you would give us fur­ther in­struc­tion re­gard­ing these mat­ters.” And then when Na­than­iel had sat down, Je­sus con­tin­ued speak­ing: “I well know, Na­than­iel, that no such idea of evil is ap­proved in your mind, but I am dis­ap­pointed in that you all so of­ten fail to put a gen­uinely spir­i­tual in­ter­pre­ta­tion upon my com­mon­place teach­ings, in­struc­tion which must be given you in hu­man lan­guage and as men must speak. Let me now teach you con­cern­ing the dif­fer­ing lev­els of mean­ing at­tached to the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of this rule of liv­ing, this ad­mo­ni­tion to ‘do to oth­ers that which you de­sire oth­ers to do to you’:

147:4.4“1. The level of the flesh. Such a purely self­ish and lust­ful in­ter­pre­ta­tion would be well ex­em­pli­fied by the sup­po­si­tion of your ques­tion.

147:4.5“2. The level of the feel­ings. This plane is one level higher than that of the flesh and im­plies that sym­pa­thy and pity would en­hance one’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion of this rule of liv­ing.

147:4.6“3. The level of mind. Now come into ac­tion the rea­son of mind and the in­tel­li­gence of ex­pe­ri­ence. Good judg­ment dic­tates that such a rule of liv­ing should be in­ter­preted in con­so­nance with the high­est ide­al­ism em­bod­ied in the no­bil­ity of pro­found self-re­spect.

147:4.7“4. The level of broth­erly love. Still higher is dis­cov­ered the level of un­selfish de­vo­tion to the wel­fare of one’s fel­lows. On this higher plane of whole­hearted so­cial ser­vice grow­ing out of the con­scious­ness of the fa­ther­hood of God and the con­se­quent rec­og­ni­tion of the broth­er­hood of man, there is dis­cov­ered a new and far more beau­ti­ful in­ter­pre­ta­tion of this ba­sic rule of life.

147:4.8“5. The moral level. And then when you at­tain true philo­sophic lev­els of in­ter­pre­ta­tion, when you have real in­sight into the right­ness and wrong­ness of things, when you per­ceive the eter­nal fit­ness of hu­man re­la­tion­ships, you will be­gin to view such a prob­lem of in­ter­pre­ta­tion as you would imag­ine a high-minded, ide­al­is­tic, wise, and im­par­tial third per­son would so view and in­ter­pret such an in­junc­tion as ap­plied to your per­sonal prob­lems of ad­just­ment to your life sit­u­a­tions.

147:4.9“6. The spir­i­tual level. And then last, but great­est of all, we at­tain the level of spirit in­sight and spir­i­tual in­ter­pre­ta­tion which im­pels us to rec­og­nize in this rule of life the di­vine com­mand to treat all men as we con­ceive God would treat them. That is the uni­verse ideal of hu­man re­la­tion­ships. And this is your at­ti­tude to­ward all such prob­lems when your su­preme de­sire is ever to do the Fa­ther’s will. I would, there­fore, that you should do to all men that which you know I would do to them in like cir­cum­stances.”

147:4.10Noth­ing Je­sus had said to the apos­tles up to this time had ever more as­ton­ished them. They con­tin­ued to dis­cuss the Mas­ter’s words long af­ter he had re­tired. While Na­than­iel was slow to re­cover from his sup­po­si­tion that Je­sus had mis­un­der­stood the spirit of his ques­tion, the oth­ers were more than thank­ful that their philo­sophic fel­low apos­tle had had the cour­age to ask such a thought-pro­vok­ing ques­tion.