Jesus and scientific living

Evangelist Evan was reminiscing with scientist Simon about his childhood, when he would be moved to tears while reading the New Testament gospels, especially in Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus’ beautiful wholeness of righteousness. “Happy are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”  That righteousness is a gift from God is evident from the passage from Isaiah, “My soul shall rejoice in the love of my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation and has covered me with the robe of his righteousness.”

    At that point Simon offered some reflections. Jesus’ beautiful wholeness of righteousness was not only a matter of spiritual and religious living. The human Jesus exemplified scientific living in a way that was possible in the first century Mediterranean world. These two dimensions are coordinated in the beautiful wholeness. Other beatitudes imply the need for an excellent understanding of fact. Happy are the merciful . . . . They need have a knowledge and understanding and recognition of the natural weakness and environmental handicaps of those to whom they desire to express wise compassion. Peacemakers need to understand psychology, sociology, history, and more–in ways that do not always rely on book learning. Simon concludes with the reading of the footnote full of illustrations from Jesus life, found in Jeffrey Wattles, Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, chapter three, in the section titled “Jesus’ down-to-earth understanding of fact.”

“Jesus made various psychological observations: a person can focus on a small fault in another person while being blinded by a huge fault of his own (Matt 7:3); some people who seem like prophets are charlatans in disguise (Matt 7:6); people will respond very diversely to the message of the kingdom due to factors beyond the control of the messengers (Matt 13:3–9); evil in the heart corrupts our thoughts and actions (Matt 15:18–20); his enemies fell into numerous hypocritical behaviors (Matt 23); some people hang on fearfully to the truth as it was given to them, while others work productively and creatively with what they have (Matt 25:14–31).

“Jesus made sociological observations: a group that is torn by divisiveness cannot endure (Mark 3:24); because his messengers were being sent into a hostile environment, they needed to be wise and take care not to inflame the situation by, for example, offering advanced spiritual teaching to people who could not profit from it and would react aggressively (Matt 7:6 and 10:16–28, and John 16:18).

“Jesus made further observations that could be classified as relevant to other disciplines: he acknowledged the need to live with the fact of political power and distinguished the political from the spiritual realm (Matt 22:17); he showed evidence of extraordinarily careful study of the scriptures (Luke 20:37–38); he encouraged people to interpret current events in a perspective that combined history and religion (Matt 16 :1–3); he gave advice about how to conduct a fair grievance procedure (Matt 18:15–17); and he gave indications of a just and friendly universe (Luke 12:22, Matt. 5:45 and 6:25–34).”

Watch the 6:35 video or listen to the audio file.