Speaking with a nephew of mine, I asked about his children. He said that they were well balanced–good in school, sports, and social life, and none of these taken to extremes. I know enough about him and his parents and grandmother to guess that there was another factor which he left out, the spiritual dimension.
Watch the 10:45 video or listen to the podcast episode.
Jesus’ character was strong, well-balanced, and centered in God. How does being centered in this way transform the concept of balance? Spiritual values are top priority, but lesser material and cultural values are not fanatically denounced, but integrated in their proper subordinate position. Being centered and balanced gave him strength of character.
Jesus’ character was a microcosm of what our world needs. The global crisis is that culture is advancing but dominated by material concerns, in such a way that the spiritual is lagging behind, and so is the wisdom that comes from prayer and worship as well as philosophical pursuits. So if we can promote a better balance in ourselves and cleverly promote it in our surroundings, we’ll help our unbalanced world get straight about what are the top priorities and the values that find their proper integration in a subordinate place.
Let’s look at a couple examples of Jesus’ balance. Some Pharisees are trying to get at Jesus, and they ask him when the kingdom of God is coming. He redirects their question from when to where by his reply: “The kingdom of God is within you.” The kingdom within is the spirit of God! Sometimes Jesus made critical characterizations about Pharisees, but he did so in a manner that did not intend to generalize about all of them. Jesus was characterizing groups like Max Weber, regarded as the founder of modern sociology did. When we hear researched characterizations of Millennials or GenXers, the same kind of scientific practice is being used. Nor did Jesus deny that Pharisees had no strength. It was good, for example, that they tithed.
Another quality of Jesus’ balance had to do with integrating the subordinate level of factual knowledge with the hgher level of spiritual goals. The human Jesus was a pre-modern scientist. He made keen observations and expressed them in general terms with an eye to cause-and-effect relationships. For example, he said that a kingdom divided cannot stand; neither can a house or a city. How different was the military insight of Julius Caesar (before he seized power over the Senate in Rome and made his position of dictator permanent, though that role had been to function only in the most urgent crises). A couple generations before Jesus, Gaius Julius gained command of an army to conquer Gaul, the territory which is roughly that of France today. He was a brilliant and successful general, and his policy in Gaul was “Divide and conquer.”
Jesus also may have known of the war centuries earlier between Athens and Sparta, when Athens was torn apart from within by bitterly opposed factions, which led to the victory of Sparta. Jesus would have known homes that were not able to perform their true functions properly because of divisive relationships between family members. Among the reasons why Jesus makes this point about divided houses, cities, and kingdoms, part of what he is doing is drawing attention to what makes for healthy group functioning.
Jesus was balanced in his strength and gentleness. Strength without gentleness is brutality. Gentleness without strength is weakness. But whenever Jesus exercised one of those qualities in an obvious way, the other quality was also present.
