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From the Urantia Book: "The Pharisees and the chief priests had begun to formulate their charges and to crystallize their accusations. They objected to the Master's teachings on these grounds:
1. He is a friend of publicans and sinners; he receives the ungodly and even eats with them.
2. He is a blasphemer; he talks about God as being his Father and thinks he is equal with God.
3. He is a lawbreaker. He heals disease on the Sabbath and in many other ways flouts the sacred law of Israel.
4. He is in league with devils. He works wonders and does seeming miracles by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of devils."
Jesus' image of God challenges the image of reality contained in conventional wisdom cross-culturally, including the conventional wisdom of the church and modern culture. Modern Christianity is a form of conventional wisdom in which God is imaged as the judge whose standards must be met. But whenever we assert that God's love depends on requirements of any kind, one has abandoned grace as the dominant image of our reality.
If we see reality as hostile, indifferent, or judgmental, then self-preservation becomes the first law of our being. But if we see reality as supportive and nourishing, then another response becomes possible--trust. God loves and is gracious to us prior to any achievement on our part--but we rarely see it that way. Typically we live our lives as if reality were not gracious.
"The concept of God as a king-judge, although it fostered a high moral standard and created a law-respecting people as a group, left the individual believer in a sad position of insecurity respecting his status in time and in eternity. The later Hebrew prophets proclaimed God to be a Father to Israel; Jesus revealed God as the Father of each human being. The entire mortal concept of God is transcendently illuminated by the life of Jesus. Selflessness is inherent in parental love. God loves not like a father, but as a father. He is the Paradise Father of every universe personality." (TUB, 2:6.4)
The broad and narrow ways: the four central concerns of conventional wisdom in Jesus' time were family, wealth, honor, and religion, the latter being the most central. Yet many of Jesus' most radical words were directed against each of these. "How hard it will be for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!" were his words. (TUB 163:3.1) Likewise he ridiculed the pursuit of honor, mocking those who sought places of honor at a banquet, the best seats in the synagogue, or salutations in the market-place. He chastened religious practices which were motivated by the desire for social recognition: "Do not sound trumpets when you give alms," he said. (TUB 175:1.9-20)
Especially instructive is the parable of the Pharisee and the tax-collector. The Pharisee's prayer of thanksgiving referred to his religious behavior: "I thank thee, God, that I am not like other men; I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get." It is important to note that the Pharisee was a model of the faithful Jew. Significantly, the Pharisee's opposite in the parable, the outcast, rested his security solely in God, laying no claim to righteousness: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." (TUB 167:5.1)
Anxiety as part of the broad way is implicit in much of Jesus' teaching. He saw people as anxious to receive what they believed they deserved, anxious about holding on to what they had, anxious about social approval. He saw people of his day as being dominated by the quest for security--as being profoundly selfish. Anxious about securing their own well-being, whether through family, possessions, honor, or religion, people experience a narrowing of vision, become insensitive to others and blind to the glory of God all around us. God is not absent; rather we do not see. (TUB 142:5.2; 165:5) But Jesus taught another way.
The narrow way of transformation: Jesus used a diversity of images both in his diagnosis of the human condition and to speak about its cure--the path of transformation. Among these there is a new heart, a centering in God, and the way of death.
In ancient Jewish psychology the heart was the self at its deepest center. It was the source of perception, thought, emotion, and behavior, all of which were subject to it. The 'heart' was the fundamental determinant of both 'being' and behavior. So what really matters is what kind of heart you have. The things which come out of a person are what defile him. "Cleanse the inside" he said, "and behold everything is clean." Jesus consistently radicalized the Torah by applying it to the inner self rather than to outward behavior. "Blessed are the pure in heart," he said, "for they shall see God."
When centered in God, in the Spirit, the heart was good and fruitful, but when centered in man, in the "flesh," in the finite, the heart was bad and became deceitful above all things.
How does the self become centered in Spirit and not in itself or culture? Not by trying to change the heart with the mind or will. Rather this inner transformation and radical re-centering involves the path of death. (TUB 153:3)
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