by Keith Becker

Created on: July 18, 2008

More than anything, Jesus believed that pleasing God was first and foremost about love and compassion. When the men of a town brought the prostitute before Jesus to stone her to death, they asked him what to do. His response: let those without sin cast the first stone. Everyone dropped their stones, because no one was without sin. The woman was spared.
Jesus did not necessarily want everyone to follow all the letters of the law. He himself broke the Sabbath by healing the sick, and forgave others for their sins, something the priests of his day believed only God could do. In fact, Jesus was in constant conflict with the Jewish priests over how to follow God. His idea was that everyone sins, but that in being forgiven your sins you would end up loving more than someone who has never been forgiven anything. At a dinner party a Priest had in Jesus' honor, a woman came in and cried at his feet, washed them clean with her tears. Jesus realized this woman, who had sinned much, loved him more than the priest did. He even told the priest how he did not wash his feet with tears or ask for forgiveness. No, the priest was too self-righteous for that. The point is that Jesus thought pleasing God was a matter of the heart, was a matter of being "clean" in terms of leading a good life of love and compassion; it is about realizing your mistakes and desiring whole heartedly to get over them, and loving God at all costs. He wanted everyone to help each other. The Good Samaritan didn't believe in God but did the will of God anyways just by helping out the hurt man, taking care of him, and tending to his wounds. Affirmation of God and following everything in the Bible means nothing if you cannot love, if you cannot practice compassion for your fellow humans. Paul realized this too. Which is why he supplanted the laws or commandments with the law of love. Indeed, "Love covers a multitude of sins."

Another thing Jesus insisted on about pleasing God was being whole. All his healing miracles were described as making someone whole. Wholeness though transcends physical health. Wholeness is really about being open-minded, humble, inclusive, integrated, and capable of accepting everyone, including yourself. There is evil in all of our hearts. But the key is not to let this evil rule. God was always described as being an antinomy-a self-contained totality of inner opposites, capable of good and evil, light and dark. We too are antinomies, as we have been made in God's image. But Jesus basically declared that God was good, meaning that the darkness of God had been contained in the light. Evil and wrath are still there in God, but God chooses to transcend them for love, which is what God wants us to do as well.

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