The hidden (political) meaning of Jesus’ teachings has been explicated at length elsewhere.21 The doorway beyond a religious, otherworldly account of Jesus’ ideas resides in the meaning Jesus attached to the notion of “spirit.” Then, as now, the word “spirit” was ambiguous; it could pertain to a phantom or, instead, to a motivation. Jesus usually was referring to the latter, even though his listeners tended to assume that he meant the former.
Kingdoms Colliding
Jesus taught that human beings are inclined in two directions, or they experience two “spirits.” On the one hand, they have a tragic inclination to invent rules and standards, and to judge one another mercilessly against their arbitrary conventions. This is their original sin, or is “the sin of the world,” for it occurs all over the world.
When the Bible says Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, it means, according to Jesus, that they invented human laws. This is explained in the Gnostic Gospel of Philip. The tree of knowledge of good and evil is man-made law. “It has power to give knowledge of good and evil.… The law says, ‘Eat this, and do not eat that’” (Philip, para. 74).
God had imposed no laws in the Garden of Eden, not even against murder, except the commandment to not “eat” from the tree of morality. The original sin of humankind was indeed turning away from the command- ments of God, but the sin was not becoming lawless, but lawful.
DK834X_book.fm Page 88 Tuesday, September 20, 2005 8:11 AM
What Jesus Says to Public Administration 89
Through their judging, people create hierarchies of command and status, or “power and glory.” As power and glory grow, or as the judging that creates them becomes more detailed, complex, and pervasive, the social order becomes like a personality, a thinking creature with a will over and above the thoughts and wills of the persons it comprises. Because it has a personality, Jesus gave it a name. He called it “Satan,” a word whose root means “to turn away,” that is, from God.26
On the other hand, while human beings are inclined toward judgment, they also have the potential to be filled with faith, love, and a spirit of holiness. Faith comes first. People have been informed by God (through prophets) that they are creations of a supreme being, a being who is their constant observer, who alone has knowledge of good and evil, and who is their ultimate judge. This belief engenders love, because it causes people to stop judging and ranking. Faith also brings about a “spirit of holiness,”
which is a natural human tendency to stand up to authority.27 To the extent that people believe in God and in an ultimate judgment, they become hostile to power because they become less concerned about conventional laws and judgments than about the judgment of their Creator as conveyed to them through their consciences.
Jesus described history or civilization as an evolving conflict between these two motivations, between, on the one hand, power, judgment, and Satan, and on the other hand faith, love, and holiness. Power gr ows naturally and manifests itself in larger and larger kingdoms, but its growth sparks a commensurate growth of the spirit of holiness, which can be tapped to form a counterkingdom, a “kingdom of God” in which all power and glory will be given to the Creator rather than to human beings. Jesus was the first and only king of the holy kingdom because he was the lawgiver who outlawed law. He saved humanity from its own “eternal judgment” (or “damnation”) by wiping away conventional beliefs about good and evil and replacing them with two simple commandments (to love God and neighbor). Jesus predicted that in the future, or in “the world to come,” the kingdom of the holy would grow, and the kingdoms of those who judge would collapse.
Three “Days” of Transformation
From the perspective of those who view Jesus as a political activist and not as a self-proclaimed deity, the most puzzling statement by Jesus was his assertion that he would “destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days … build another made without hands.”28 This statement is the best evidence in the entire Gospels for the Christian premise that Jesus believed himself to have supernatural abilities or con- nections. Out of the numerous parables and aphorisms that Jesus offered
DK834X_book.fm Page 89 Tuesday, September 20, 2005 8:11 AM
90 Handbook of Organization Theory and Management
during his brief ministry, it was the only statement brought forward at his trial before the Sanhedrin (Matt. 26:61–62; Mark 14:58). By then, the comment had become so notorious that not only did witnesses report it to the high priests, but those who watched him be crucified quoted it as well and mocked Jesus for having said it (Matt. 27:39–40; Mark 15:29–30).
The meaning of this statement was, and still is, the central question surrounding the mission, nature, and destiny of the movement Jesus initiated. However much modern Christians may wish to assume that the meaning is obvious — that Jesus was referring to his resurrection after the crucifixion — the people who lived during the beginning of the Christian era were deeply divided over the message Jesus intended.29
Assuming that Jesus was using religious metaphors to make points about politics, his statement about destroying and remaking the temple probably referred to the historical process by which worldly systems of power and glory would be overturned. On this view, when Jesus said the
“temple made without hands” would come in three days, he meant that it would come in three stages, three alternating periods of darkness and light. Human systems of power and glory tend to expand continuously, becoming harsher and more judgmental — “darker” — at each step, until the people subjugated within them become so hopeless, so “poor in spirit,”
that they are willing to die to salvage their humanity, at which point the old order collapses, and a new era dawns like a new “day.” This image is confirmed in rough form by many modern scholars of civilization, including Weber,4 Spengler,3 and Toynbee.30
Many of Jesus’ parables and aphorisms related in some way to this vision of history. He compared the staggered coming of the kingdom to a landowner returning home unannounced (Mark 13:35), a wedding to which some guests are invited at the last minute (Matt. 22:14), a sudden storm presaged only by a red morning sky (Matt. 16:2), a dinner party suddenly opened to the poor (Luke 14:16–24), and a thief in the night who surprises a watchman (Luke 12:37–40). Jesus also spoke of several temptations that would sidetrack humanity from its spiritual growth (Luke 4:1–12; Matt. 4:1–10). Clearly, Jesus saw the coming of a merciful, godly kingdom not as a gradual humanization or spiritualization, but as a process with many sudden stops and starts.
Jesus seems to have thought that he and his followers, and those who would continue their efforts in the future, would function as revolutionary catalysts causing the kingdom to materialize. They would challenge author- ity, and their defiance would cause authority to react in a manner exposing the force on which it relies, thus sparking further defiance by others, and so on. An exchange between Jesus and Judas, recorded in “The Dialogue of the Savior” (paragraphs 99 and 100), describes the revealing (or apoc- alyptic) tension Jesus said existed between faith and power. Judas asked,
DK834X_book.fm Page 90 Tuesday, September 20, 2005 8:11 AM
What Jesus Says to Public Administration 91
“How is the spirit apparent?” Jesus answered with a rhetorical question,
“How is the sword apparent?” By the sword, Jesus meant the force and coercion underlying political authority and social rank. Generally it is invisible; those at both the top and the bottom of the social pyramid treat authority and inequality as if they were based not on the threat of punishment or death, but on totally reasonable grounds. The sword is exposed only when it is unsheathed, and it is unsheathed only when authority is defied or social rank is challenged or ignored.