humiliation

68:4.2It must be borne in mind that the mores orig­i­nated in an ef­fort to ad­just group liv­ing to the con­di­tions of mass ex­is­tence; the mores were man’s first so­cial in­sti­tu­tion. And all of these tribal re­ac­tions grew out of the ef­fort to avoid pain and hu­mil­i­a­tion while at the same time seek­ing to en­joy plea­sure and power. The ori­gin of folk­ways, like the ori­gin of lan­guages, is al­ways un­con­scious and un­in­ten­tional and there­fore al­ways shrouded in mys­tery.

184:4.1The Jew­ish law re­quired that, in the mat­ter of pass­ing the death sen­tence, there should be two ses­sions of the court. This sec­ond ses­sion was to be held on the day fol­low­ing the first, and the in­ter­ven­ing time was to be spent in fast­ing and mourn­ing by the mem­bers of the court. But these men could not await the next day for the con­fir­ma­tion of their de­ci­sion that Je­sus must die. They waited only one hour. In the mean­time Je­sus was left in the au­di­ence cham­ber in the cus­tody of the tem­ple guards, who, with the ser­vants of the high priest, amused them­selves by heap­ing ev­ery sort of in­dig­nity upon the Son of Man. They mocked him, spit upon him, and cru­elly buf­feted him. They would strike him in the face with a rod and then say, “Proph­esy to us, you the De­liv­erer, who it was that struck you.” And thus they went on for one full hour, re­vil­ing and mis­treat­ing this un­re­sist­ing man of Gal­i­lee.

184:4.2Dur­ing this tragic hour of suf­fer­ing and mock tri­als be­fore the ig­no­rant and un­feel­ing guards and ser­vants, John Zeb­e­dee waited in lonely ter­ror in an ad­join­ing room. When these abuses first started, Je­sus in­di­cated to John, by a nod of his head, that he should re­tire. The Mas­ter well knew that, if he per­mit­ted his apos­tle to re­main in the room to wit­ness these in­dig­ni­ties, John’s re­sent­ment would be so aroused as to pro­duce such an out­break of protest­ing in­dig­na­tion as would prob­a­bly re­sult in his death.

184:4.3Through­out this aw­ful hour Je­sus ut­tered no word. To this gen­tle and sen­si­tive soul of hu­mankind, joined in per­son­al­ity re­la­tion­ship with the God of all this uni­verse, there was no more bit­ter por­tion of his cup of hu­mil­i­a­tion than this ter­ri­ble hour at the mercy of these ig­no­rant and cruel guards and ser­vants, who had been stim­u­lated to abuse him by the ex­am­ple of the mem­bers of this so-called San­hedrist court.

184:4.4The hu­man heart can­not pos­si­bly con­ceive of the shud­der of in­dig­na­tion that swept out over a vast uni­verse as the ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gences wit­nessed this sight of their beloved Sov­er­eign sub­mit­ting him­self to the will of his ig­no­rant and mis­guided crea­tures on the sin-dark­ened sphere of un­for­tu­nate Uran­tia.

184:4.5What is this trait of the an­i­mal in man which leads him to want to in­sult and phys­i­cally as­sault that which he can­not spir­i­tu­ally at­tain or in­tel­lec­tu­ally achieve? In the half-civ­i­lized man there still lurks an evil bru­tal­ity which seeks to vent it­self upon those who are su­pe­rior in wis­dom and spir­i­tual at­tain­ment. Wit­ness the evil coarse­ness and the bru­tal fe­roc­ity of these sup­pos­edly civ­i­lized men as they de­rived a cer­tain form of an­i­mal plea­sure from this phys­i­cal at­tack upon the un­re­sist­ing Son of Man. As these in­sults, taunts, and blows fell upon Je­sus, he was un­de­fend­ing but not de­fense­less. Je­sus was not van­quished, merely un­con­tend­ing in the ma­te­rial sense.

184:4.6These are the mo­ments of the Mas­ter’s great­est vic­to­ries in all his long and event­ful ca­reer as maker, up­holder, and sav­ior of a vast and far-flung uni­verse. Hav­ing lived to the full a life of re­veal­ing God to man, Je­sus is now en­gaged in mak­ing a new and un­prece­dented rev­e­la­tion of man to God. Je­sus is now re­veal­ing to the worlds the fi­nal tri­umph over all fears of crea­ture per­son­al­ity iso­la­tion. The Son of Man has fi­nally achieved the re­al­iza­tion of iden­tity as the Son of God. Je­sus does not hes­i­tate to as­sert that he and the Fa­ther are one; and on the ba­sis of the fact and truth of that su­preme and su­per­nal ex­pe­ri­ence, he ad­mon­ishes ev­ery king­dom be­liever to be­come one with him even as he and his Fa­ther are one. The liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the re­li­gion of Je­sus thus be­comes the sure and cer­tain tech­nique whereby the spir­i­tu­ally iso­lated and cos­mi­cally lonely mor­tals of earth are en­abled to es­cape per­son­al­ity iso­la­tion, with all its con­se­quences of fear and as­so­ci­ated feel­ings of help­less­ness. In the fra­ter­nal re­al­i­ties of the king­dom of heaven the faith sons of God find fi­nal de­liv­er­ance from the iso­la­tion of the self, both per­sonal and plan­e­tary. The God-know­ing be­liever in­creas­ingly ex­pe­ri­ences the ec­stasy and grandeur of spir­i­tual so­cial­iza­tion on a uni­verse scale—cit­i­zen­ship on high in as­so­ci­a­tion with the eter­nal re­al­iza­tion of the di­vine des­tiny of per­fec­tion at­tain­ment.

89:3.1Re­nun­ci­a­tion came as the next step in re­li­gious evo­lu­tion; fast­ing was a com­mon prac­tice. Soon it be­came the cus­tom to forgo many forms of phys­i­cal plea­sure, es­pe­cially of a sex­ual na­ture. The rit­ual of the fast was deeply rooted in many an­cient re­li­gions and has been handed down to prac­ti­cally all mod­ern the­o­logic sys­tems of thought.

89:3.2Just about the time bar­bar­ian man was re­cov­er­ing from the waste­ful prac­tice of burn­ing and bury­ing prop­erty with the dead, just as the eco­nomic struc­ture of the races was be­gin­ning to take shape, this new re­li­gious doc­trine of re­nun­ci­a­tion ap­peared, and tens of thou­sands of earnest souls be­gan to court pov­erty. Prop­erty was re­garded as a spir­i­tual hand­i­cap. These no­tions of the spir­i­tual dan­gers of ma­te­rial pos­ses­sion were widespreadly en­ter­tained in the times of Philo and Paul, and they have markedly in­flu­enced Eu­ro­pean phi­los­o­phy ever since.

89:3.3Pov­erty was just a part of the rit­ual of the mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of the flesh which, un­for­tu­nately, be­came in­cor­po­rated into the writ­ings and teach­ings of many re­li­gions, no­tably Chris­tian­ity. Pen­ance is the neg­a­tive form of this oft­times fool­ish rit­ual of re­nun­ci­a­tion. But all this taught the sav­age self-con­trol, and that was a worth-while ad­vance­ment in so­cial evo­lu­tion. Self-de­nial and self-con­trol were two of the great­est so­cial gains from early evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion. Self-con­trol gave man a new phi­los­o­phy of life; it taught him the art of aug­ment­ing life’s frac­tion by low­er­ing the de­nom­i­na­tor of per­sonal de­mands in­stead of al­ways at­tempt­ing to in­crease the nu­mer­a­tor of self­ish grat­i­fi­ca­tion.

89:3.4These olden ideas of self-dis­ci­pline em­braced flog­ging and all sorts of phys­i­cal tor­ture. The priests of the mother cult were es­pe­cially ac­tive in teach­ing the virtue of phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing, set­ting the ex­am­ple by sub­mit­ting them­selves to cas­tra­tion. The He­brews, Hin­dus, and Bud­dhists were earnest devo­tees of this doc­trine of phys­i­cal hu­mil­i­a­tion.

89:3.5All through the olden times men sought in these ways for ex­tra cred­its on the self-de­nial ledgers of their gods. It was once cus­tom­ary, when un­der some emo­tional stress, to make vows of self-de­nial and self-tor­ture. In time these vows as­sumed the form of con­tracts with the gods and, in that sense, rep­re­sented true evo­lu­tion­ary prog­ress in that the gods were sup­posed to do some­thing def­i­nite in re­turn for this self-tor­ture and mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of the flesh. Vows were both neg­a­tive and pos­i­tive. Pledges of this harm­ful and ex­treme na­ture are best ob­served to­day among cer­tain groups in In­dia.

89:3.6It was only nat­u­ral that the cult of re­nun­ci­a­tion and hu­mil­i­a­tion should have paid at­ten­tion to sex­ual grat­i­fi­ca­tion. The con­ti­nence cult orig­i­nated as a rit­ual among sol­diers prior to en­gag­ing in bat­tle; in later days it be­came the prac­tice of “saints.” This cult tol­er­ated mar­riage only as an evil lesser than for­ni­ca­tion. Many of the world’s great re­li­gions have been ad­versely in­flu­enced by this an­cient cult, but none more markedly than Chris­tian­ity. The Apos­tle Paul was a devo­tee of this cult, and his per­sonal views are re­flected in the teach­ings which he fas­tened onto Chris­tian the­ol­ogy: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” “I would that all men were even as I my­self.” “I say, there­fore, to the un­mar­ried and wid­ows, it is good for them to abide even as I.” Paul well knew that such teach­ings were not a part of Je­sus’ gospel, and his ac­knowl­edg­ment of this is il­lus­trated by his state­ment, “I speak this by per­mis­sion and not by com­mand­ment.” But this cult led Paul to look down upon women. And the pity of it all is that his per­sonal opin­ions have long in­flu­enced the teach­ings of a great world re­li­gion. If the ad­vice of the tent­maker-teacher were to be lit­er­ally and uni­ver­sally obeyed, then would the hu­man race come to a sud­den and in­glo­ri­ous end. Fur­ther­more, the in­volve­ment of a re­li­gion with the an­cient con­ti­nence cult leads di­rectly to a war against mar­riage and the home, so­ci­ety’s ver­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion and the ba­sic in­sti­tu­tion of hu­man prog­ress. And it is not to be won­dered at that all such be­liefs fos­tered the for­ma­tion of celi­bate priest­hoods in the many re­li­gions of var­i­ous peo­ples.

89:3.7Some­day man should learn how to en­joy lib­erty with­out li­cense, nour­ish­ment with­out glut­tony, and plea­sure with­out de­bauch­ery. Self-con­trol is a bet­ter hu­man pol­icy of be­hav­ior reg­u­la­tion than is ex­treme self-de­nial. Nor did Je­sus ever teach these un­rea­son­able views to his fol­low­ers.

89:0.2The sav­age was early pos­sessed with the no­tion that spir­its de­rive su­preme sat­is­fac­tion from the sight of hu­man mis­ery, suf­fer­ing, and hu­mil­i­a­tion. At first, man was only con­cerned with sins of com­mis­sion, but later he be­came ex­er­cised over sins of omis­sion. And the whole sub­se­quent sac­ri­fi­cial sys­tem grew up around these two ideas. This new rit­ual had to do with the ob­ser­vance of the pro­pi­ti­a­tion cer­e­monies of sac­ri­fice. Prim­i­tive man be­lieved that some­thing spe­cial must be done to win the fa­vor of the gods; only ad­vanced civ­i­liza­tion rec­og­nizes a con­sis­tently even-tem­pered and benev­o­lent God. Pro­pi­ti­a­tion was in­sur­ance against im­me­di­ate ill luck rather than in­vest­ment in fu­ture bliss. And the rit­u­als of avoid­ance, ex­or­cism, co­er­cion, and pro­pi­ti­a­tion all merge into one an­other.

182:1.6“And now, my Fa­ther, I would pray not only for these eleven men but also for all oth­ers who now be­lieve, or who may here­after be­lieve the gospel of the king­dom through the word of their fu­ture min­istry. I want them all to be one, even as you and I are one. You are in me and I am in you, and I de­sire that these be­liev­ers like­wise be in us; that both of our spir­its in­dwell them. If my chil­dren are one as we are one, and if they love one an­other as I have loved them, all men will then be­lieve that I came forth from you and be will­ing to re­ceive the rev­e­la­tion of truth and glory which I have made. The glory which you gave me I have re­vealed to these be­liev­ers. As you have lived with me in spirit, so have I lived with them in the flesh. As you have been one with me, so have I been one with them, and so will the new teacher ever be one with them and in them. And all this have I done that my breth­ren in the flesh may know that the Fa­ther loves them even as does the Son, and that you love them even as you love me. Fa­ther, work with me to save these be­liev­ers that they may pres­ently come to be with me in glory and then go on to join you in the Par­a­dise em­brace. Those who serve with me in hu­mil­i­a­tion, I would have with me in glory so that they may see all you have given into my hands as the eter­nal har­vest of the seed sow­ing of time in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh. I long to show my earthly breth­ren the glory I had with you be­fore the found­ing of this world. This world knows very lit­tle of you, righ­teous Fa­ther, but I know you, and I have made you known to these be­liev­ers, and they will make known your name to other gen­er­a­tions. And now I prom­ise them that you will be with them in the world even as you have been with me—even so.”

70:7.7The very se­crecy of these so­ci­eties con­ferred on all mem­bers the power of mys­tery over the rest of the tribe. Se­crecy also ap­peals to van­ity; the ini­ti­ates were the so­cial aris­toc­racy of their day. Af­ter ini­ti­a­tion the boys hunted with the men; whereas be­fore they had gath­ered veg­eta­bles with the women. And it was the su­preme hu­mil­i­a­tion, a tribal dis­grace, to fail to pass the pu­berty tests and thus be com­pelled to re­main out­side the men’s abode with the women and chil­dren, to be con­sid­ered ef­fem­i­nate. Be­sides, non­ini­ti­ates were not al­lowed to marry.