“What came through to me most strongly was the radically
‘different’ character of Jesus’s moral teaching. So different is it, indeed,
that it borders on the incomprehensible. Other moralists put forward rules of
behaviour; other revolutionists in morals try to overthrow whatever are the
existing rules and establish different ones in their stead; but Jesus is saying
that rules, any rules, are not what morality is about. God, he says, is not in
the business of awarding prizes to people live in accordance with moral rules.
You will not win any special favours from him by being virtuous, but are only
too likely to find – to your great chagrin, no doubt, as well as your
incomprehension – that he loves sinners just as much as he loves you. If this
infringes your sense of justice you have not understood the situation. It is no
use being good in the hope of getting a reward from God: this is pure
self-seeking, and therefore a self-contradictory conception of morally
admirable behaviour. Only if you are good when it is not rewarded is your
behaviour morally admirable. But then there is indeed no reward: so the
goodness has to be its own justification, regardless of consequences. God’s
loving you has nothing to do with your deserving it. He loves everybody,
including the most undeserving, indeed he loves them as much as he loves you.
Just as he loves the undeserving, so you also should love those who are
undeserving of your love, including those who deserve it least, namely your
enemies. Love is what matters, not deserving, and least of all rules. In fact,
love matters about everything else. It is the ultimate reality, the true nature
of existence, God. Perfect love is unconditional, and to unconditional love, deserving
has ceased to matter or even have any significance. It is not that Jesus is
against our living in accordance with rules. On the contrary, he recognises
that rules are necessary wherever human beings live together, and he believes
that they should be obeyed; but he sees them as arbitrary, superficial things
that should be made subservient to human needs, not human needs made
subservient to them. If we had enough love and concern for one another there
would be no need for rules. We need them only because we are selfish. They are
not, in themselves, good.
These are only a few of the teachings of Jesus, but they are
central to his message; and the fact that there was anyone at all going around
preaching things like this two thousand years ago in a desert area of the
Middle East is, to say the least of it, surprising. The extent to which they
are original to Jesus is a matter that scholars dispute, and not one about
which I know enough to have an independent opinion; but that the teachings
themselves are unobvious, and full of deep moral insight, is clear to me. Jesus
was also, although for some reason this is scarcely ever said, a profound
psychologist. When, in addition to all this, one considers the audacity with
which his views are expressed, and the poetically striking quality of many of
his illustrations, he appears perhaps the most remarkable moralist there has
ever been – a genius of a moralist, like Socrates: or perhaps even something in
the way of a creative artist, like Plato. Like the historical Socrates, but
unlike Plato, he confined his teaching to questions of morality. The nature of
this world, and of our knowledge of it, do not appear to be concerns of his. In
consequence he has nothing to offer that corresponds to the epistemological
insights of Hinduism and Buddhism – and in that sense what he says might appear
secondary, limited. But within the limitations of morality he goes as deep as
anyone was to penetrate for the better part of two thousand years. When it
comes to tellingness of moral insight, a question like ‘What will a man gain by
winning the whole world at the cost of his true self?’ is unsurpassed.
from Bryan Magee's Confessions of a Philosopher. (See also 'not not a theist' and main post).
