The Great Gospel of John
Volume 1
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Back in Nazareth
- Chapter 107 -
Simon the host's gladness about this fitting defeat of the Templers. The Lord's guidance on when to feel rightful joy and His warning against bad jokes. Examples: the healed Gadarenes and the duped blind man. The comedy of the world is a tragedy to God's children.
But I say to Simon of Cana, 'Have you now seen the advantages of being able to keep silent at the right time?! Where others speak and act on our behalf it behoves us well to keep silent. Do you understand that?'
2
Says Simon of Cana, 'Yes Lord, I understand and clearly see the advantages of keeping quiet rather than speaking, although sometimes one feels as if pulled by the hair to on such occasion let one's tongue go into spasms; yet here it has been clearly demonstrated that to keep quiet at the right time is better than the most pertinent speech But we nevertheless found it easy to keep our silence, since we had a most courageous eloquent and knowledgeable representative in the one who introduced himself to the priests as a Roman.
3
I was close to laughter at the three Templer's retreat, which would have cost them almost all of the little regard they still had in this country! Their faces grew steadily longer and their feet became markedly restless with the steadily thickening speech of the Roman, afterwards finding most appropriate arrangements for their escape. When I noticed the peculiar disquiet of the three Templer's feet, my spirit said to me: 'now they shall shortly become invisible' - and they in fact became invisible!
4
It surely won't be a sin, oh Lord, for the heart to feel unavoidably good at an occasional thwarting, like now, of the intentions of such arch-evil and utterly incorrigible thugs! I would on my part have chosen the Roman's every word myself!'
5
Say I, 'Every honourable breast can feel a righteous joy and a fortifying cheer at the exposure and destruction of ever so secret evil; but mark well, only at the fortunate thwarting of wickedness, falseness and evil, but never at the person who, usually in his blindness, has been a servant of such sin.
6
You surely saw the two Gadarenes and how evil they were! But how, after I drove the legion of devils out of them, they became good and gentle, praising God for giving man such power! Would it have been right to only feel elation there at the two loathsome ones, having been a terror to the entire region, at the mere stopping of their game and at the simultaneous plunging into the sea of the pig-profiteers' stock-in-trade?! Oh, such elation should have been most unworthy of all true humans! Yet if the joy were felt at two exceedingly tormented individuals having the plague taken from them and the tormenting spirits, through the destruction of their own spirit of usury - carefully nurtured in the Gadarenes, having to serve heaven's good cause, then the joy and cheer would be of a celestial nature and hence fully good.
7
I say unto you as a matter of profoundest living truth: he who laughs over a foolish person, shows his own fullest leanings thereto, because here the one acts foolishly owing to his foolishness, whilst the other laughs out of foolishness. And thus one foolishness finds pleasure at another, to the extent of not being pleased if the first rids himself of his foolishness and starts acting sensibly.
8
But quite another thing it is if in a brotherly fashion you reprimand the one asking foolishly and then laugh joyously and lightheartedly when the foolish one begins to act wisely! Then your joy and lightheartedness are of a celestial order and therewith good, right and just!
9
But what kind of joy and cheer, by any wisdom, could it give to anyone at all if a blind one, walking along the way, having spoken to a seeing one going the same way, as follows: "Friend, I have lost my way and don't know in which direction I'm going; my home is supposed to be straight ahead. According to the paces I have counted I should be close to it. But if by mistake, as one fully blind, I turned the wrong way, then I would be further from my house than at the point when I set out for home. Please be good enough and set me on the right track!"
10
If the seeing one were then to laugh, even whilst finding himself in the vicinity of the house, having only ten paces to go, he says to the blind: "Oh, here you've gone way out! Give me your hand and I'll lead you to your home, although it is out of my way!" The blind man happily thanks the seeing one in advance. The latter, constantly laughing to himself, leads the blind one around his house twenty times, saying to him full of inner glee: "Now, my friend, we are here; here is your house!" The blind thanks him no end, yet the seeing one is full of derision because his dodge came off!
11
I ask, who is in this case blinder, the blind or his seeing leader?! Verily I say to you: the heartless leader, because he is blind in his heart and this is a thousand times worse than blind in the head!
12
In like manner people also laugh at witty talk, especially at crude and filthy public allusions to the weaknesses and sins of their brethren!
13
Verily I say unto you: whoever can laugh over such-like or even watch some funny crank really take down some weakling, by flogging him a faintly-silvered bean as a pearl, in such a one's heart the devil has sown a fill of all kinds of evil seeds from which no fruit of life shall go forth!
14
Hence it is better to turn away from all this and rather mourn where the world is abandoning itself to impudent laughter; because the world's comedy constantly is tragedy to the true children of God and God's angels only too often weep at the worldly men's laughter out of their wicked nonsense.
15
Hence let us forget the three Templers, who indeed are full of wickedness owing to Satan's workings and their own worldly and self-love, which are their attributes, yet who nevertheless are yet humans and merely wayward children of the same Father Who is your Father. Their wickedness alone is to be condemned, but as men and brethren they are to be bewailed!'
16
It is better to cloak the intoxicated Noah than to strip him and expose him to the ridicule of the world!
17
Now that you have understood this in your hearts, let us go home from the synagogue that has become empty; because lunch will be prepared! And so let us go now!"