Loading document…
Opening in Pages for Mac...
Your browser isn’t fully supported.
For the best Pages for iCloud experience, use a supported browser.
Learn More
Cancel
Continue
J
J
Gospel in Brief Summary.
Jesus's Words in Context,
Translated
and Synthesized by
Leo
Tolstoy,
Exported from
Wikisource
5-19-22
Typeset and edited by John S
Wren, 6-6-22, 5-7-23
Jesus’s words in red.
ESUS
in his childhood spoke of God as his
Father, There was in Judea at that time a
prophet named John, who preached the coming
of God on earth. He said that if people changed
their way of life, considered all men equal, and
instead of injuring, helped one another, God
would appear and His Kingdom would be
established on earth.
H
aving
heard this preaching, Jesus withdrew
into the desert to consider the meaning of man's
life and his relation to the infi nite origin of all,
called God. Jesus recognized as his Father that
infi nite source of being whom John called God.
And becoming convinced that man's true life lies
only in the spirit of the Father, Jesus left the
desert and began to declare this teaching to
men. He said that the spirit dwelt in him, that
henceforth the heavens were open and the
powers of heaven brought to man, and a free
and boundless life had begun for man, and that
all men, however unfortunate in the body, might
be happy.
Jesus said:
T
he Sabbath is a human institution.
That man should live in the spirit is more than all
external ceremonies. Like all external forms of
religion the keeping of the Sabbath involves a
delusion. You are forbidden to do anything on
the Sabbath, but good actions should always be
done and if keeping the Sabbath hinders the
doing of a good action then the keeping of the
Sabbath is an error.
Know all of you, that nothing from outside can
defi le a man, only what he thinks and does can
defi le him.
OHN'S pupils asked Jesus what he meant by
his 'kingdom of heaven' and he answered
them:
The heaven I preach is the same as that
preached by John-that all men, however poor,
may be happy.
And Jesus said to the people
: John is the fi rst
prophet to preach to men a Kingdom of God
which is not of the external world, but in the soul
of man. The Orthodox went to hear John, but
understood nothing because they know only
what they have themselves invented about an
external God; they teach their inventions and are
astonished that no one pays heed to them. But
John preached the truth of the Kingdom of God
within us, and therefore he did more than
anybody before him. By his teaching the law and
the prophets, and all external forms of worship,
are superseded. Since he taught, it has been
made clear that the Kingdom of God is in man's
soul.
The beginning and the end of everything is the
soul of man. Every man, though he realizes that
he was conceived by a bodily father in his
mother's womb, is conscious also that he has
within him a spirit that is free, intelligent, and
independent of the body.
That eternal spirit proceeding from the infi nite, is
the origin of all and is what we call God. We
know Him only as we recognize Him within
ourselves. That spirit is the source of our life; we
must rank it above everything and by it we must
live. By making it the basis of our life we obtain
true and everlasting life. The Father-spirit who
has given that spirit to man cannot have sent it
to deceive men-that while conscious of
everlasting life in themselves they should lose it.
This infi nite spirit in man must have been given
that through him men should have an infi nite life.
Therefore the man who conceives of this spirit
as his life has infi nite life, while a man who does
not so conceive it has no true life. Men can
themselves choose life or death: life in the spirit,
or death in the flesh. The life of the spirit is
goodness and light: the life of the flesh is evil
and darkness. To believe in the spirit. means to
do good deeds; to disbelieve means to do evil.
Goodness is life, evil is death. God-an external
creator, the beginning of all beginnings-we do
not know. Our conception of Him can only be
this: that He has sown the spirit in men as a
sower sows his seed, everywhere, not
discriminating as to what part of the fi eld; and
the seed that falls on good ground grows, but
what falls on sterile ground perishes. The spirit
alone gives life to men, and it depends on them
to preserve it or lose it. For the spirit, evil does
not exist. Evil is an illusion of life. There is only
that which lives and that which does not live.
Thus the world presents itself to all men, and
each man has a consciousness of the kingdom
of heaven in his soul. Each one can of his own
free will enter that kingdom or not. To enter it he
must believe in the life of the spirit, for he who
believes in that life has everlasting life.
JESUS was sorry for people because they did
not know true happiness, therefore he taught
them. He said
:
Blessed ar
e they who have no
property or fame and do not care for them, and
unhappy are they who seek riches and fame; for
the destitute and the oppressed are in the
Father's will, but the rich and famous seek only
rewards from men in this temporal life.
To fulfi ll the will of the Father do not fear to be
poor and despised, but rejoice that you can
show men what true happiness is.
To carry out the will of the Father which gives life
and welfare to all men
observed in these fi ve
ways
:
The fi rst
way
is to do no ill to anyone
,
to arouse
anger, for evil begets evil.
The second
way
is to
not
desert
your spouse
with whom you have once been joined;
desertion and change of
spouce
causes all the
world's dissoluteness.
The third
way
is to take no oath of any kind. A
person
can promise nothing, for
they are
altogether in the Father's power; and oaths are
taken for bad purposes.
The fourth
way
is not to resist evil, not to
condemn, and not to go to law; but to endure
wrong and to do even more than people
demand, for every man is full of faults and
incapable of guiding others. By taking revenge,
we only teach others to do the same.
The fi fth
way
is not to discriminate between
fellow-countrymen and foreigners, for all are
children of
our
one Father.
These fi ve
ways
are followed
not to win praise
from men, but for your own welfare; therefore do
not pray or fas
t
in the sight of men.
The Father knows all that people need, and
there is no need to pray for anything; all that is
necessary is to seek to be in
our
Father's will.
And His will is that we should not feel
resentful
towards anyone. It is unnecessary to fast, for
men fast merely to win praise from men and
their praise should be avoided.
It is necessary only to take care to live in
our
Father's will, and the rest will all be added of
itself. A man concerned with the things of the
body cannot be concerned with the kingdom of
heaven. Even though a man does not trouble
about food and clothing, he can live: the Father
will give life. All that is needful is to be in the will
of the Father at the present moment, for the
Father gives his children what they need. Desire
only the power of the spirit, which the Father
gives
.
The fi ve
ways
show the path to the kingdom of
heaven, and this narrow path alone leads to
everlasting life. False teachers-wolves
pretending to be sheep always try to lead
people astray from this path. Beware of them!
False teachers can always be detected by the
fact that they teach evil in the name of good. If
they teach violence and executions they are
false teachers. By what they teach they may be
known. Not he fulfi lls the Father's will who calls
on the name of God, but he who does what is
good. He who fulfi lls these fi ve commandments
will have a secure and true life, of which nothing
can deprive him: but he who does not fulfi ll them
will have an insecure life which will soon be
taken from him, leaving him nothing.
It happened once that Jesus asked a woman of
another religion to give him some water to drink.
She refused on the plea that she was of a
different faith. Jesus then said to her:
If you
understood that he who is asking for water is a
living man in whom the spirit of the Father lives,
you would not refuse him, but by doing a
kindness would try to unite yourself in spirit with
the Father, and that spirit would give you not
such water as this-after drinking which a man
thirsts again-but water that gives everlasting life.
One need not pray to God in any special place,
but should serve Him , by deeds of love-by
ministering to those in whom His spirit dwells.
And Jesus said to his pupils:
The true food of
man is to fulfi ll the will of the Father-spirit, and
this fulfi llment is always possible. Our whole life
is a gathering up of the fruits of the spirit sown
within us by the Father. Those fruits are the
good we do to men. We should do good to men
unceasingly and expect no reward.
After this Jesus happened to be in Jerusalem
and came to a bathing-place beside which lay a
sick man, waiting for a miracle to cure him.
Jesus said this to him:
Do not expect to be
cured by a miracle, but live according to your
strength and do not mistake the meaning of life.
The invalid obeyed Jesus, got up, and went
away. Seeing this, the Orthodox began to
reproach Jesus for having cured an invalid on
the Sabbath. Jesus said to them:
I have done
nothing new. I have only done what our common
Father-spirit does. He lives and gives life to men,
and I have done likewise. To do this is every
man's business. Everyone has freedom to
choose life or reject it. To choose life is to fulfi ll
the will of the Father by doing good to others; to
reject it is to do one's own will and not do good
to others. It is in each one's power to do the one
or the other: to receive life or destroy it.
The true life of man can be compared to this: A
master apportioned to his slaves a valuable
property and told them each to work on what
was given him. Some of them worked, others
simply put away what had been given them.
Then the master demanded an account of what
they had done, and to those who had worked he
gave still more of his property, while from those
who had not worked he took away all that they
had.
The portion of the master's valuable property is
the spirit of life in man, who is the son of the
Father spirit. He who in this life works for the
sake of the spirit-life receives infi nite life, he who
does not work loses what was given him.
The only true life is the life common to all, and
not the life of the individual. Each should work
for the life of others.
After that Jesus went to a desert place and
many people followed him. Towards evening his
pupils came and said: How can we feed all
these people?
Among the gathering were some who had no
food, and some who had bread and fi sh. Jesus
said to his pupils:
Give me what bread you have
.
And he took the loaves and gave the bread to
his pupils, and they gave it away to others, who
began to do the same. So everyone ate what
was distributed in this way, and they all had
enough without eating all the food that was
there. And Jesus said:
That is how you should
always act. It is not necessary for each man to
obtain food for himself but it is needful to do
what the spirit in man demands, namely to share
what there is with others.
After this Jesus chose certain pupils and sent
them about to preach the doctrine of the life of
the spirit. When sending them he said:
You are
going to preach the life of the spirit, therefore
renounce in advance all fleshly desires and have
nothing of your own. Be prepared for
persecution, privation, and suffering. Those who
love the life of the body will hate you, torment
you, and kill you; but do not be afraid. If you
fulfi ll the will of the Father you possess the life of
the spirit, of which no one can deprive you.
The pupils set out and when they returned they
announced that they had everywhere
overcome the teaching of evil.
Then the Orthodox said to Jesus that his
teaching, even if it overcame evil, was itself an
evil, for those who carry it out must endure
sufferings. To this Jesus said:
Evil cannot
overcome evil. Evil can only be mastered by
goodness, and that goodness is the will of the
Father-spirit, common to all men. Every man
knows what is good for himself, and if he does
that for others-if he does that which is the will of
the Father-he will do good. And so the carrying
out of the will of the Father-spirit is good even if
it be accompanied by the suffering and death of
those who fulfi ll that will.
JESUS said that his mother and his brothers
had no prior claim on him as such, only those
were never to him who fulfi lled the will of their
common Father. A man's life and blessedness
depend not on family relationships, but on the
life of the spirit.
Jesus said:
Blessed are those who retain their
understanding of the Father. A man living in the
spirit has no home-the spirit cannot own a
house.
He said that he himself had no fi xed
abode. To fulfi ll the Father's will no special place
is needed, for it is always and everywhere
possible. The death of the body cannot be
dreadful to a man who resigns himself to the will
of the Father, for the life of the spirit does not
depend on that of' the body. Jesus says that he
who believes in the life of the spirit can fear
nothing.
When Martha complained that she alone busied
herself about the supper, while her sister Mary
listened to his teaching instead of helping,
Jesus replied:
You blame her unjustly. If you
need the results of your work, busy yourself with
it, but let those who do not need physical
pleasures attend to the one thing essential for
life.
Jesus said:
He who desires to obtain true life,
consisting in the fulfi llment of the Father's will,
must fi rst of all give up his own personal desires.
He must not only not plan his life according to
his own wishes, but must be ready to endure
privation and suffering at any moment.
He who desires to arrange his bodily life
according to his own desires, will wreck the true
life of fulfi llment of the Father's will. And there is
no advantage in gain for the physical life if that
gain wrecks the life of the spirit.
Most ruinous of all for the ills of the spirit is the
love of gain, of getting rich. Men forget that
whatever riches or goods they obtain they may
die at any moment, and that property is not
essential for life. Death hangs over each of us.
Sickness, murder, or accident may at any
moment end our life. Bodily death is an
inescapable condition of every second of our
life. While a man lives he should regard every
hour of life as a postponement of death granted
by someone's kindness. We should remember
this, and not say we do not know it. We know
and foresee all that happens on earth and in the
sky, but forget death, which we know awaits us
at any moment. Unless we forget death we
cannot yield ourselves to the life of the body; for
we cannot reckon on it.
We cannot serve both the illusory life of the
body and the life of the spirit; we must serve the
one or the other. A man cannot serve property
and God. What is honorable among men is an
abomination before God. In God's sight riches
are evil. A rich man is guilty in that he eats much
and luxuriously, while at his door the poor are
hungry. And everyone knows that property not
shared with others is held in non-fulfi llment of
the Father's will.
A rich, Orthodox ruler came once to Jesus and
began to boast that he fulfi lled all the
commandments of the law. Jesus reminded him
that there is a commandment to love others as
oneself and that that is the Father's will. The
ruler said he kept that also. Then Jesus said to
him:
That is not true; if you really wished to fulfi ll
the Father's will you would not possess
property. You cannot fulfi ll the Father's will if you
have property of your own which you do not
give to others. And Jesus said to his pupils: Men
think it impossible to live without property, but I
tell you that true life consists in giving what you
have to others.
A certain man named Zaccheus heard the
teaching of Jesus and believed it, and having
invited Jesus to his house said to him: I am
giving half my fortune to the poor and will
restore fourfold to those I have wronged. And
Jesus said:
Here is a man who fulfi lls the
Father's will, for a man's whole life must be
passed in fulfi llment of that will, and there is no
condition in which a man can say: 'I have
fulfi lled the will of God.'
Good cannot be measured; it is impossible to
say who has done more or less. A widow who
gives away her last farthing gives more than a
rich man who gives thousands. Nor can
goodness be measured by its usefulness.
Let the case of the woman who felt pity for
Jesus and recklessly poured over his feet many
pounds' worth of costly oil serve as an example.
Judas said she had acted foolishly because the
cost of the oil would have suffi ced to feed many
people. But Judas was a thief and a liar, and
when he spoke of the material advantage he
was not thinking of the poor. The essential thing
lies not in the utility of an action or the largeness
of a gift, but what is necessary is always, every
moment, to love others and give them what one
has.
ANSWERING the Jews' demand for proofs of
the truth of his teaching, Jesus said: T
he truth of
my teaching lies in the fact that I teach not
something of my own but what comes from the
common Father of us all. I teach what is good
for the Father of all and is therefore good for all
men.
Do what I say, fulfi ll the fi ve commandments,
and you will see that what I say is true.
Fulfi llment of these fi ve commandments will
drive away all evil from the world, and therefore
they are certainly true. It is clear that he who
teaches the will of Him who sent him, and not
his own will, teaches the truth. The law of Moses
teaches the fulfi llment of human desires and so
it is full of contradictions; my teaching is to fulfi ll
the will of the Father and so it is harmonious.
T
his e-book comes from the online library
Wikisource. This multilingual digital library,
built by volunteers, is committed to
developing a free accessible collection of
publications of every kind: novels, poems,
magazines, letters...
You are free to use our e-books for any
purpose (including commercial exploitation),
under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported[2]
license or, at your choice, those of the GNU
FDL[3].
Online Socrates Cafe, we can help
you start or join a face-to-face
Socrates Cafe in your local public
library or in your neighborhood.
Since January 9, 1990. First socrates
cafe in denver, the Friday after 9/11.
John Scott Wren. www.JohnWren.com
Sunday, May 7, 2023
From: John S. Wren
To: You #YYYRTN
1.
Join with us tonight (Sun, 5-7) or any
Sunday, Tuesday, Friday, or Saturday at 8:30
p.m. Eastern, 5:30 p.m. Pacifi c and be our
guest for an online Socrates Cafe, organized
and facilitated by the Socrates Cafe Society,
which is sponsored by the Small Business
Chamber of Commerce, Inc.
https://meet.google.com/nrn-mahh-vry
After you have attended 2 or more Online
Socrates Cafes with us, lead one. Then call me
and let’s talk about when and where you want
start a new Socrates Cafe, how we can best help
you, and how you can best help us.
2.
Why? Because we still can. See Robert
Putman’s
Bowling Alone.
SBCC's “The Gospel in Brief,” Published by:
Small Business Chamber of Commerce, Inc.
We teach to learn & learn to win.
Call SBCC.
1881 Buchtel Blvd. #501, Denver, CO 80210
www.SmallBizChamber.org
Socrates Cafes * Franklin Circles Call for
more information: (303)861-1447
