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Jesus' Respect for Our Personality
from "Jesus and Ourselves" by Leslie Weatherhead
Part 4 of The Urantia Book, "The Life of Jesus" was prepared by a commission of twelve midwayers, the leader of which states:
As far as possible I have derived my information from purely human sources. Only when such sources failed, have I resorted to those records which are superhuman. When ideas and concepts of Jesus' life and teachings have been acceptably expressed by a human mind, I invariably gave preference to such apparently human thought patterns. (1343)
The book cited above, published in 1930, was one of the sources used by the midwayers. Ideas and phrases in the material from Weatherhead that follows is a source for the midwayers' restatement "in modern phraseology" of a discourse by Jesus about principles to be used in the preaching of the gospel. The discourse commences on p. 1675. Read together, we have an interesting example of the way in which human source material was used in The Urantia Book.
"There are at least four ways in which one man can impose his will on another. The first and crudest is by the use of physical force, supposing one man is stronger than the other.
"The second is by what we call a powerful personality. With this one man can often override another's objection and opposition by the sheer force of his magnetic, energetic personality. We all know people whom it is hard to resist for this reason.
"The third method is by a kind of intellectual superiority. We know people who overwhelm us with arguments why we should do what they wish, pressing reasons upon us one after another, till our mind, unable, on the spur of the moment, to examine them, acquiesces through the sheer weight of evidence produced.
"The fourth way is by an appeal to the emotions of the person we wish to influence. It may be the emotion of their admiration for ourselves when a person says, "I'll do anything for you"--or by an appeal to fear or pity. Probably all these four ways have a value, but, if unduly pressed, they imply disrespect to the personality of the other. Let us see how Christ regarded these four methods
"First of all, think of physical power. Jesus must have been in touch with resources of physical power which no one else could tap. The lure of the third temptation reveals that it was possible that He might have used that power to dethrone Caesar, set up a new government, new rule, new order. The power of the temptation lay in the contemplation of what force might be made to achieve. He could end oppression, He could give men justice; and it might be argued that, if His aim were good, the use of this force would have been legitimate. Yet the striking thing is that, out of respect for men's personality, Jesus will not try to win even a righteous cause by force....
"Turn, secondly, to the method we call personal psychic force. Think to what a degree Jesus possessed this! A man will leave his work, his home, his friends, at two words from the Master: "Follow Me." He turns on a crowd hustling Him toward a precipice, down which they intend to cast Him, and, because of the light in His eye and the majesty of this bearing, His persecutors fall back on either side, not one of them daring to touch Him. Are we surprised to hear one man say to Him, "I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest"?....
"We must not let our conceptions of the "Gentle Jesus," beautiful and true as these are, blind us to the fact that when He was on earth, and His personality was manifested in a human body which made it easily apprehended, the impact of that personality on others was all but overwhelming. By that I do not mean that men were all attracted.
"There happened with Jesus what always happens where you have a powerful personality. There were few neutrals. Men were for or against. And they were swayed, not by examining the issue in all its bearings and making a personal choice which recognized all the implications, but were swept into one or other camp by those almost electrical currents of psychic energy which streamed from Him.
"So crowds surged round Him, and would have died for Him. Others withdrew to weave their corporate suspicion, hate, and fear into a net strong enough to drag Him to death. Jesus knew this would happen. As He said, He came not to bring the peace of smug, self-satisfied complacency, but the sword of division that severs sometimes the most close-knit intimacies of life.
"Knowledge of these facts, and respect for man's personality, made Him stand away from men in a way that sometimes appears to us crushing or cold. In reality, He is making reverent room for the sanctities of human life and the freedom of human choice.
"Turn, thirdly, to the method of mental superiority. How easy it would have been for Jesus to take an attitude expressed in the words of those who say to us, "Well, I know better than you do."
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