THE GREAT GOSPEL OF JOHN
VOLUME 5
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus in the region of Caesarea Philippi. (cont.) Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 16
- Chapter 138 -
Roklus' attempt to justify white lies.
Roklus says, "Everything that You, oh Lord, have now said, is only too true, and nothing can be said against it! But since You are so strictly against anything which bears even the very slightest semblance of fraud in it even when a person could be in the fullest seriousness physically and spiritually helped through it, this obviously makes me very reflective now, since for me the principle maintained through a thousand experiences stands firm, that now very many people can be helped in no other way than only on the way of a subtle fraud "but which I call certainly no fraud, but pure cleverness of state.
2
Speaking honestly, oh Lord, after the experiences I have made on this Earth, some people cannot be helped in any other way than alone through a well-meant little deceipt! The children must however be deceived in the beginning always, otherwise one would not be able to do anything with them at all; and what good would one do them then if one immediately led brought the purest truth into their face?! I have indeed laid things before You at another opportunity quite clearly and distinctly as a person, so that it was never about ever following a person to his disadvantage, but instead always only to his spiritual advantage in some way! And I only did that because I saw too clearly in advance that this or that person was not to be got around at all in any other way. If that now counts as a sin before You "yes, Lord, then it will truly be highly difficult to be a person!
3
For example: I go somewhere and meet on the way as a heathen a totally blind arch-Jew, whose super-zealous temple fanaticism predicts immediately a whole legion of the most terrible devils in everybody. If a heathen touches him with his knowledge, he is immediately unclean for a whole year, and in such an imagined position of his the unhappiest person, because he cannot and may not take part in any of the many advantages of the temple. If I tell him that I am a heathen "if he asks me who I am "he would then rather allow all ordeals happen to him than to be led by me over a highly dangerous part of the mountain path. But if I tell him very firmly that I am also a Jew from Jerusalem, he will extend his hand in joy and then allow himself to be led over the highly dangerous path very most gratefully. Once I have brought the poor blind man there where there is no longer any danger for him and the smell of his now very close homeland already attracts him and he can no longer go wrong, then I take my leave and go on with a happy mood. The blind Jew then learns no syllable more from me his whole life long, and no one will easily be able to say to him that that person who once led him over a very dangerous way was a heathen.
4
Now tell me about a reasonable and honestly well-meaning person, whether then the certainly highly harmless lie was not cleverer and better than if I had said the truth to the poor person, namely that I am a heathen! Then I tell You and anyone a thousand times over in your face that only an icteric and fully brain-sick idiot from the most dubious league of Pharisees can explain such a necessary lie as a sin "but an only somewhat reasonable person never and a God certainly all the less! For so highly and widely different can the present and after-world views on life certainly not be that one as purely spiritual what all pure reason on this Earth must recognize as good and fair must see that as the straightest opposite! For if on the other side something is black and dark for the pure spirit which here always a well-meaning soul sees as white and bright, there either this or that other-worldly life is needed in a madhouse.
5
Lord, You know my whole life from the cradle onwards and will hardly find a moment in my whole life when I have meant harm with someone or wanted to do even the slightest harm to someone! A thousand times I will be cursed by Your all-powerful divine mouth, if that is provable for me! But if I was nonetheless a sinner in that I had to take my casual flight from politics particularly among spiritually weak people in order to be able to do something good to them according to the call of my heart and according to my human recognition, then I must openly admit that it is very unpleasant for me then to be a human being; so, oh Lord, turn me according to Your omnipotence only into a donkey and You shall have my thanks for it!
6
My certainly only humanly reasonable opinion is this: Every person does according to his best knowledge, recognition and conscience what seems to him to be best, is peaceful and conciliatory and does good for the poor suffering humanity according to his strength, and so his action must also be seen as correct and good and correct even by a God and recognized, and no god can demand more from the person as unmistakably His creation and work than what and which capabilities He Himself has laid in him! Or is it possible that a highly wise god can demand more from His work than what and how much He has laid in the same? I believe that this would be pretty difficult and would have approximately the same face as if someone in all seriousness wanted to pour ten buckets of water out of a very small barrel or skin that hardly holds one bucket-full. I therefore ask You, oh Lord and Master, to express Yourself more clearly in this respect; for thus as I believe to have understood You previously, no even little reasonable human existence on this Earth is thinkable according to Your teaching!
7
Yes, the truth, the holy, must be for the people; they must get to know the house and its order and justice most exactly in which they live and actually should live for ever according to Your promise. But the naked, if even still so pure truth seems to me at least indeed very beneficial, but otherwise extremely bitter medicine which everyone who is only a little bit sensitive gums spits out again immediately as soon as they have only touched it. But what does one do? One surrounds the bitter medicine with something sweet and pleasant, and the patient will then easily swallow it and without getting a fever in their stomach, when they will soon begin their healing effect! And that, I believe, should also be the same with the spreaders of the truth! We should give them never, particularly at the beginning, any other way than hidden and reveal it little by little! Then in my opinion the best effect will never be lacking. But if you give it immediately quite uncovered and naked, you will very often and most of all cause more damage than any true use.
8
I do not want to say any word for the extenuation of our natural miracles and am myself of the perfectly convinced opinion that we have risked too far; but I can always add with my best conscience that we ourselves have never harmed anyone with this, but instead, according to our well-considered knowledge normally doubly done good. Firstly we have often dried the tears of very sad parents with it, which certainly is and cannot be something bad, and secondly we have provided the children of very terribly poor parents in the best way for the whole time of their life on Earth and set them on a point so that they received in the houses of rich people the better traditions according to the present world order also a better education, while they otherwise would have been in the greatest poverty without any education grown to human-like animals, as in this time there is truly no lack of examples. No angel rises from the lit heavens and takes such poor half animal like people and teaches them; and if we obviously do something to better and educated people according to our best knowledge, recognition and conscience in a possible way and method, we run the risk of sinning before God and being declared as a fraudster of the people before Him!
9
Lord and Master, You can easily teach and speak, for Your will is the director of the whole of eternity! But we weak people, we nothings in comparison with You, feel only always the pressure, but seldom or never relief, and have on top of this the very sharpest expectation of that day on the other side.
10
Lord and Master, truly, Your teaching has quite straightened me up, and I was full of the most blessed expectations; but now I have been quite thrashed down and do not know how to help myself because You demand things from me for whose fulfillment I with my common sense do not know what to do , and I cannot act against my common sense!"
11
At this Roklus became still and said nothing.