literality

• error to interpret Jesus’ teachings in

140:6.8And then said Je­sus: “But you will stum­ble over my teach­ing be­cause you are wont to in­ter­pret my mes­sage lit­er­ally; you are slow to dis­cern the spirit of my teach­ing. Again must you re­mem­ber that you are my mes­sen­gers; you are be­holden to live your lives as I have in spirit lived mine. You are my per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tives; but do not err in ex­pect­ing all men to live as you do in ev­ery par­tic­u­lar. Also must you re­mem­ber that I have sheep not of this flock, and that I am be­holden to them also, to the end that I must pro­vide for them the pat­tern of do­ing the will of God while liv­ing the life of the mor­tal na­ture.”

• error to interpret Jesus’ teachings in

140:8.10Je­sus was not, there­fore, a po­lit­i­cal re­former. He did not come to re­or­ga­nize the world; even if he had done this, it would have been ap­pli­ca­ble only to that day and gen­er­a­tion. Nev­er­the­less, he did show man the best way of liv­ing, and no gen­er­a­tion is ex­empt from the la­bor of dis­cov­er­ing how best to adapt Je­sus’ life to its own prob­lems. But never make the mis­take of iden­ti­fy­ing Je­sus’ teach­ings with any po­lit­i­cal or eco­nomic the­ory, with any so­cial or in­dus­trial sys­tem.

• error to interpret Jesus’ teachings in

140:10.2An­other great hand­i­cap in this work of teach­ing the twelve was their ten­dency to take highly ide­al­is­tic and spir­i­tual prin­ci­ples of re­li­gious truth and re­make them into con­crete rules of per­sonal con­duct. Je­sus would pre­sent to them the beau­ti­ful spirit of the soul’s at­ti­tude, but they in­sisted on trans­lat­ing such teach­ings into rules of per­sonal be­hav­ior. Many times, when they did make sure to re­mem­ber what the Mas­ter said, they were al­most cer­tain to for­get what he did not say. But they slowly as­sim­i­lated his teach­ing be­cause Je­sus was all that he taught. What they could not gain from his ver­bal in­struc­tion, they grad­u­ally ac­quired by liv­ing with him.

140:10.3It was not ap­par­ent to the apos­tles that their Mas­ter was en­gaged in liv­ing a life of spir­i­tual in­spi­ra­tion for ev­ery per­son of ev­ery age on ev­ery world of a far-flung uni­verse. Not­with­stand­ing what Je­sus told them from time to time, the apos­tles did not grasp the idea that he was do­ing a work on this world but for all other worlds in his vast cre­ation. Je­sus lived his earth life on Uran­tia, not to set a per­sonal ex­am­ple of mor­tal liv­ing for the men and women of this world, but rather to cre­ate a high spir­i­tual and in­spi­ra­tional ideal for all mor­tal be­ings on all worlds.

140:10.4This same evening Thomas asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, you say that we must be­come as lit­tle chil­dren be­fore we can gain en­trance to the Fa­ther’s king­dom, and yet you have warned us not to be de­ceived by false proph­ets nor to be­come guilty of cast­ing our pearls be­fore swine. Now, I am hon­estly puz­zled. I can­not un­der­stand your teach­ing.” Je­sus replied to Thomas: “How long shall I bear with you! Ever you in­sist on mak­ing lit­eral all that I teach. When I asked you to be­come as lit­tle chil­dren as the price of en­ter­ing the king­dom, I re­ferred not to ease of de­cep­tion, mere will­ing­ness to be­lieve, nor to quick­ness to trust pleas­ing strangers. What I did de­sire that you should gather from the il­lus­tra­tion was the child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship. You are the child, and it is your Fa­ther’s king­dom you seek to en­ter. There is pres­ent that nat­u­ral af­fec­tion be­tween ev­ery nor­mal child and its fa­ther which in­sures an un­der­stand­ing and lov­ing re­la­tion­ship, and which for­ever pre­cludes all dis­po­si­tion to bar­gain for the Fa­ther’s love and mercy. And the gospel you are go­ing forth to preach has to do with a sal­va­tion grow­ing out of the faith-re­al­iza­tion of this very and eter­nal child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship.”

• error to interpret Jesus’ teachings in

142:7.17Je­sus replied: “Thomas, Thomas, how long be­fore you will ac­quire the abil­ity to lis­ten with the ear of the spirit? How long will it be be­fore you dis­cern that this king­dom is a spir­i­tual king­dom, and that my Fa­ther is also a spir­i­tual be­ing? Do you not un­der­stand that I am teach­ing you as spir­i­tual chil­dren in the spirit fam­ily of heaven, of which the fa­ther­head is an in­fi­nite and eter­nal spirit? Will you not al­low me to use the earth fam­ily as an il­lus­tra­tion of di­vine re­la­tion­ships with­out so lit­er­ally ap­ply­ing my teach­ing to ma­te­rial af­fairs? In your minds can­not you sep­a­rate the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom from the ma­te­rial, so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal prob­lems of the age? When I speak the lan­guage of the spirit, why do you in­sist on trans­lat­ing my mean­ing into the lan­guage of the flesh just be­cause I pre­sume to em­ploy com­mon­place and lit­eral re­la­tion­ships for pur­poses of il­lus­tra­tion? My chil­dren, I im­plore that you cease to ap­ply the teach­ing of the king­dom of the spirit to the sor­did af­fairs of slav­ery, pov­erty, houses, and lands, and to the ma­te­rial prob­lems of hu­man eq­uity and jus­tice. These tem­po­ral mat­ters are the con­cern of the men of this world, and while in a way they af­fect all men, you have been called to rep­re­sent me in the world, even as I rep­re­sent my Fa­ther. You are spir­i­tual am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual king­dom, spe­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the spirit Fa­ther. By this time it should be pos­si­ble for me to in­struct you as full-grown men of the spirit king­dom. Must I ever ad­dress you only as chil­dren? Will you never grow up in spirit per­cep­tion? Nev­er­the­less, I love you and will bear with you, even to the very end of our as­so­ci­a­tion in the flesh. And even then shall my spirit go be­fore you into all the world.”

• error to interpret Jesus’ teachings in

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’: