Introduction to The Rabbi, The Count & The Storekeeper 

Who am I to edit the teachings of Jesus?

I’m an ordinary man, living in a small, ordinary town, with no accomplishments of particular note. I’m a shopkeeper, living and working on the main street of a Georgia mountain community, and my family does not belong to the most prominent church in town. While I do have a good education, my colleges were not prominent beyond the regions where they were located. 

 That being said, I went ahead and tried to state the essence of Jesus’ teachings, as he would have made them to the ordinary people of first century Palestine and as I believe he has said them to me, not speaking out loud or even privately to my mind, but simply through the pages of a book.   This is, in brief, an ordinary teaching for ordinary people by an ordinary person, Jesus of Nazareth, a first century rabbi, or teacher, who promised that he would return in spirit to each and everyone who would listen.  (I use the word ordinary for Jesus in the sense that the actual person named “Jesus” was not a super-human figure who glowed in the dark, wore a halo or had insights into reality beyond those available to any other person, then or now.) 

            I further feel that the transmission of Jesus’ teaching came to me via Leo Tolstoy, a Russian nobleman and writer at the turn of the last century.  Tolstoy felt that he had heard the inner voice of Jesus, so I listened to Tolstoy, and now you may, or may not, listen to me.  That’s the way The Spirit seems to work, in the mystical tradition to which many Christians, as well as non-Christians, subscribe today.

 

I originally began to look at the basic teachings of Jesus for several reasons.  The first began several years ago when a new acquaintance handed me an evangelical pamphlet, which he believed would introduce me to salvation.  It was filled with a number of Biblical quotations that were meant to lead me to the salvation offered by God’s Son, Jesus.  However, when I looked at the source of the quotations, I couldn’t help but notice that not one of them was from the Gospels -- not one of them actually purported to be a quote from Jesus.  It was almost as if to say: no one gets to the Father except through Paul, John, Peter or anyone other than Jesus.  Jesus was obviously important to the authors of the pamphlet only as something of a walking metaphor, and his teachings were not of primary importance, at least as far as the author of the pamphlet was concerned.  Since that time, I have glanced at a number of Bible-quoting pamphlets, and I find that, repeatedly, they ignore the actual sayings of Jesus in favor of the epistle writers, as if Jesus just could’t choose the right words or stories for converting, or redeeming, anyone.

 

            Then during a Sunday service several years ago, I listened more closely to the story of the transfiguration in the book of Luke.  This led to several across-the-store-counter questions of some professedly pious Christians:  “What does God command us to do in the presence of Jesus?  Are we to worship and adore him, love him to pieces or continually regard him as separate-but-equal with God, our creator?” The answer from most of those I questioned was that we should worship Jesus, while the answer from God at the conclusion of the transfiguration incident was clear:  “This is my beloved son, listen to him.”  So obviously, God the Father thought that the words of Jesus were of major importance, although we have no record that Jesus actually wrote down any of his words.  The Bible only records that Jesus once wrote words in the sand, doodling with a stick, and then left the words behind when he departed.

 

Another time, my now son-in-law, a talented scientist and teacher, asked me for something that would explain what Christianity actually was.   I thought of telling him to read the Gospels, beginning with the Book of Mark, as had once been recommended to me, but I then thought it might be disheartening for him, a developing scientist, to plunge directly into Biblical reading.  So I recommended C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity as a lucid explanation of what core beliefs/opinions lay at the heart of Christianity, even as I wondered if there was a better work on the subject.  Lewis wrote about Christianity for people who felt they knew Christianity, but not for those who had no such connection or who felt antagonism or disappointment toward religious practices.

 

Then along came Leo Tolstoy.  I knew Tolstoy’s biography, but a close friend and spiritual advisor recommended The Kingdom of God is Within You, which in turn led me to Tolstoy’s Gospel in Brief.   Like Thomas Jefferson, Steven Mitchell, Alan Watts and a host of others, Tolstoy felt that modern Christianity had been overly influenced by writings about Jesus instead of revealing the actual religion of Jesus.  So Tolstoy, arguably one of the world’s greatest writers, sat down with his knowledge of Greek and Latin and developed his own translation of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, without any clouding of these teachings due to a narrative line or particular dogmas of the Orthodox Church.  He also felt, as did Thomas Jefferson before him, that the teachings of Jesus had been so changed by the editorialists of the early church that many “lesser,” or institutional, minds had intruded onto the actual words of Jesus.  However, the essential teachings would stand out as “diamonds in a dunghill,” and we have only to extract them to see with startling clarity the beauty and possible divinity of the teachings of Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth.

 

And that is what happened to me.  Reading The Gospel in Brief gave me a sense that I was listening directly to Jesus in a way that countless Bible readings have not.  While reading I began to turn down the corners of a number of pages (an old habit), and that, in turn, made me return and retrieve a number of what I considered key verses in my understanding of Jesus’ lessons.  Instead of a story about Jesus, I felt as if I were actually entering into the mind of Jesus, knowing him as a teacher rather than a metaphor.  And just as when a student listens to a talented teacher give a lecture on a rich subject, certain teachings stood out, some because I found them different or more profound, others because they had a particular reference to my own life and personality.   

 

While Tolstoy’s Gospel is organized using the Lord’s Prayer as an outline, and while it is not long, I still felt it’s primary ideas could be condensed even further and sharpened a bit by being re-stated in the language of today.  Of course, one obvious problem arises whenever someone begins to write down favorite Bible verses and stories and ignore or overlook verses that do not attract the collector’s attention: “How dare you leave that out!”  This is a most justifiable criticism, and yet it is one that could be made of every reader, preacher or follower of the Gospels.  Selectivity is unavoidable, simply because there are so many contradictory ideas throughout the Bible.  Any Biblical reader or student is going to follow favorite themes, or they are going to be attracted to a particular vision of Jesus.  That is happening here, too.  However, I have always agreed with theologians who felt that there has to be a core, a starting point if you will, to the teachings of all religious leaders, and Jesus’ core teachings are no exception. 

 

Jesus has been given a number of titles over the years: “Son of God,” “Immanuel,” “Second Person of the Trinity,”  “King of Kings,” or “Most Perfect Human.”  I’ve heard a number of sermons on these titles, and I have also heard devout believers remark:  “Jesus couldn’t just be a teacher; he has to be more than that!”  For them, ironically, the humility of being simply a teacher was not fit for someone who taught humility as a virtue.  Personally, I’m not bothered by the fact that Jesus accepted the title of “rabbi” or “teacher.”  It means much more to me than “King of Kings,” since an ancient Persian title doesn’t have quite the impact it had 2,000 years ago.  I also have to admit I’m sometimes bothered by the “praise service” concept of some churches, because they seem to have a degree of theological arrogance to them: “Our God is so wonderful, so we must be wonderful, too!”  The image brought to mind is of finding an ant nest where the ants were lined up and singing a praise song to a little boy hovering over their nest.  The little boy might like the tune or he may not, but from the teachings of Jesus, the little boy would be acting more godly if he wished the ants were conducting a charitable endeavor instead of a performance.     

As I noted above, whole Christian sects have sprung up based solely upon the writings about Jesus in the epistles, without considering the fact that the authors of these letters never quote Jesus’ teachings or sayings directly – perhaps because they had never read them.  The Epistle writers were more than likely deceased by the time Jesus’ teachings were compiled or written down, or if such texts existed, the Epistle writers may not have had access to them.  Nor would they particularly care to read such a document.  For Paul, in particular, Jesus’ role was sacrificial and spiritual.   Jesus’ life, death and resurrection were what counted, and Jesus’ teachings were simply re-statements of the essential truths of the Torah and the prophets, which Paul, a Pharisee, knew very well.  For Paul, Jesus’ teachings were not unique.  It was Jesus’ existence that was unique, divine, and important beyond all measures of importance.   

 

           And Paul and the Epistle writers were correct about Jesus’ teachings.  He didn’t teach anything that was totally original, but, as C.S. Lewis points out in Mere Christianity, “great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities:  it is quacks and cranks who do that.” (p. 78, MacMillan Paperbacks Edition, 1960)   If we want to call ourselves followers of Jesus, called The Christ, the anointed one of God, we certainly ought to look closely at what the man had to say, and yet I find that throughout much of my life, the actual teachings of Jesus are not given much primacy.  This can be blamed, at least in part, to the view that Jesus was walking around on earth primarily to act out a ritual of salvation for mankind.  The presentation of this idea is one of my earliest memories of theological thought.  A Sunday school teacher taught us the word “atonement” and explained that Jesus had to be a sacrifice to bring us into “at-one-ment” with God, who for some reason required that a Lamb be slaughtered for this purpose.   I remember wondering later why God would blame all of us for the failure of one man, Adam, but that was God’s business.  He was, after all, the Big Guy in the Sky, and He could do whatever He wanted.   If God was angry with each and every one of us, at least we had an intercessor (I imagined a divine Perry Mason, only slimmer and with long, blond hair) that would plead with a stern God not to give us our just desserts.  Changes to this theology occurred with my increasing years, as they continue today. 

 

            In compiling these teachings of Jesus, I imagined that if Jesus came to talk to someone like me, an ordinary man in an ordinary town, there would not be time for a long series of lectures.  If Jesus had only come in a time when pamphleteering was possible, at least we would have some outline of his actual teachings, but if such a text existed, it has been lost.   So I’m attempting to fill this void.  Am I editorializing?  Certainly!  We all do, just as the initial apostles did, so in this regard, I am continuing a long, established tradition of Christian writers.  Am I fully qualified for this task?  Certainly not!   But I think I have a calling for the quest, which goes back to my childhood.

 

After finishing my confirmation classes at Madeira Presbyterian Church in Ohio, the minister who had taught the classes came to visit my parents on an “official” visit -- he was wearing a dark suit, and my parents were sitting formally in the living room, as I remember the event.  He came to give them his opinion that I should consider the ministry as a career choice, since I obviously seemed to have an affinity for religious studies.   While this thought remained with me for a long time, when I actually reached the point in college where I needed to make a career choice, I had also reached the conclusion that I could not sign onto a Christian sect as a True Believer.  Today, a generation later, I still find myself more interested in being a True Follower than a True Believer.  Deciding to follow a code of conduct that leads to a full life and happiness seems to be much more enticing than trying to say the proper passwords in order to enter the heavenly household somewhere up in the sky.  And so today I try to picture Jesus not as a distant persona but as a person alive and current.

As a person growing up in mid-century America, when science was exploding with possibilities and a “new thought” came almost daily, it was tough to reconcile religion with reality, and now as I grow older, I see that it was (and still is) a problem for a great many others, both Christian and non-Christian.  When faced with a conflict between what religions teach and science shows, most of us will postpone the resolution of the problem by erecting a mental “wall.”  Religion is on one side; “the world” is on the other.  This is not necessarily a bad thing to do, and it is somewhat consistent with the teachings of Jesus, who kept repeating that the world of the spirit is not the same as the materialistic world, although the material world exists within the spiritual world.  The problems come when the wall crumbles, as it frequently does.  Galileo looked through his telescope, biologists look through their microscopes or physicists look with their minds and, presto, reality shifts.  We think we have God figured out, and then something happens -- a sudden death, a startling act of cruelty or a homosexual Samaritan showing up at the door.   All can make us search again for a God-Who-Won’t-Stand-Still.

 

What I have found in the teachings of Jesus is a consistent voice that gives a way to live a full and loving life.  By making this voice as brief as I can, I hope to make it easier to digest, both for myself and for others.  And it  has been a help for me at times.  If a reader doesn't agree with the points I have raised, that is fine.  They should make a gospel for themselves.  It can be a most worthwhile occupation.