WAS JESUS A KIND MASTER?

Our devotionals and manuals of spiritual theology tend to portray Jesus as having been the "gentle Nazarene," "the kind Master," etc. These expressions, though true, give the reader a misconception about the true character of Jesus.

To be gentle, to be kind, is for many of us, to be conniving with all human weaknesses; to be incapable of rigour in defending truth and justice. Many books give the idea that the spiritual master never says no to the weaknesses, indiscipline and miseries of others. For many, the spiritual master must be, above all, sympathetic, leaving everything as it is to see how it goes.

But we find none of these traits in Jesus’s personality. He is, above all, the defender of truth, honesty, discipline, the righteousness of human life, whether pleasant or unpleasant.

When three men wanted to be his disciple, Jesus did not embrace them enthusiastically as wonderful idealists or spiritualists, but he calmly regarded one of these enthusiasts and said: "Foxes have caves, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to recline the head." And the dazzled candidate disappeared forever.

Another enthusiast declares that it wants to be his disciple, as long as he allows the candidate to say farewell to the family first. But Jesus replies, "Whoever lays hold of the plough, and then looks back, does not fit for the kingdom of God." And with this bombastic answer, the sentimental candidate also disappears.

Jesus invited another young man to follow him simply by saying, "Follow me." And the guest was willing to follow him, as long as...

And here comes the customary restrictive conditions: "Let me go first and bury my father who has just died," and he hears the categorical reply: "Let the dead bury their dead - but go and proclaim God's kingdom."

A kindly and sympathetic master should have met such a reasonable request. But Jesus shows to be rigorous and unkind. Any master would have obeyed such a humane and godly request. Jesus, however, dares to deny the request and defend truth and discipline.

None of these three cases would deserve Jesus the title of gentle, kind, sympathetic.

Demands with a rigour that: "Whoever does not renounce all that he has; he cannot be my disciple."

On the occasion of the temple cleansing ceremony, Jesus does not kindly ask the desecrators to please withdraw with the money exchange tables to the side of the sanctuary entrance - but he makes with ropes a whip and threatens the merchants, summarily overturning the tables, shouting: "Make not of my Father's house a marketplace, a den of thieves." He defied and fearlessly challenged the supposed doctors of the Law - powerful pontiffs of the official religion of the time - pointing them as "whitewashed tombs," hypocrites... "blind leading another blind," in this "luminous" spiritual myopia... When the Jews crossed their arms on the Sabbath, he said that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath... Or another time, when spiritual healing went unsuccessful by his disciples, Jesus warns: "You, a perverse generation without faith! For how long shall I be with you? For how long shall I bear you?"

As Jesus spoke the Truth in the temple, his mother and brothers were waiting outside, unable to enter because of the crowd; when someone told him that they wanted to speak to him, he said: "Who is my mother? And who are my brother's?" And looking around, stretching out his hand upon the disciples, said: "Behold my mother and my brethren! For everyone who fulfils the will of my heavenly Father is my mother, sister, brother."

His character is universalistic. For him, above all, the truth, the sanctity, the dignity of human life. Neither the anger nor the applause of anyone mattered to him nor the sympathy of the selfish. He was the greatest religious restorer of humankind, the most daring spiritual revolutionary. He unmercifully plucked the strange roots that had covered the tree of revelation that God had planted at the foot of the cradle of the human race with forty centuries of Jewish ritualism.

When the master acts with rigour, he always defends a sacred cause, not defending his offended personality. But woe to those who put at risk the truth, justice, sacredness, and respect of human life's eternal values! Faced with this, the true master knows only rigour and discipline.

It is widespread among us to cover up a weakness or spiritual cowardice with the coloured veil of spirituality, of kindness, of human gentleness.

The vast majority of our social world needs a thousand times more the rigour of truth than of sweetness and kindness. Love without rigour is not true love. Whoever is strict with itself can be strict with others without lacking in truth and love.

It is possible to tell hard truths to someone without offending it, if that person realizes that rigour is inspired by love.

Strangely, those treated with rigour esteems more the master than one treated with kindness without rigour. Only a profane man hopes to be always treated with sensitive and sweet goodness because he is not interested in self-realization.