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Jesus Cares About Who We Are, How We Think, and How We Live

The Moral Teachings of Jesus: Radical Instruction in the Will of God

by David P. Gushee

You Will Become Salt, Light, & Good Deeds

Jesus’s moral teachings are an ongoing message of our living Lord, the best account we have of the will of God; its constitutes a way of life that respects the broader discourse of Scripture. Christians are meant to be those who commit to obey/incarnate, to give voice to and defend these teachings. How can we embody the Gospel in our daily lives? Sadly, it seems that the moral teachings of Jesus are too poorly emphasized in many of our churches: sometimes morality and spirituality are shockingly taught as contestants. There are historical reasons but no excuses. This has proven disastrous to the moral health of the church and society at large. Our culture and our campus communities are also in serious need of these teachings: We grapple with a fragmented society of relativism, contestation, and polar ideological extremes that seek to divide us.

Below are some imaginative, life-inspiring/life-saving quotes from David P. Gushee that capture the momentum and pertinence of Jesus’s powerful moral teaching in the Four Gospels, but especially in Matthew 5-7, The Sermon on the Mount. Jesus shows a wise, transcendent brilliance as he interweaves key elements of human flourishing with the will of God: knowledge, truth, holiness, justice, grace, and love. As historian Tom Holland notes, this teaching and Jesus’s exemplum are the foundation of Western ethics of human rights, sanctity of life, justice, and dignity. David P. Gushee is distinguished university professor of Amsterdam. The elected past-president of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Christian Ethics, Gushee is the author or editor of twenty-nine books. He has an international reputation as one of the leading Christian moral thinkers of this era. McGill University philosopher-emeritus professor Charles Taylor also reveals the inescapable nature of moral frameworks in his brilliant tome, Sources of the Self, Harvard University Press, 1989 (pp. 3-107). It helped me deal with issues of moral/spiritual identity and self-creation in French philosopher Michel Foucault in my University of Wales PhD work in philosophical theology. Can we avoid a moral lobotomy in our day? Let’s hope so.

~Dr. Gordon E. Carkner, Meta-Educator, Blogger, Author, YouTube Webinars

The Church’s Incarnational Stance (Salt, Light, & Deeds): 52. We let our light shine by living in such a way that people see (perceive, discern, experience) our good works and that motivates them to give glory to God…. Through our lives we point people to God so clearly that they honor God’s name because of what they have seen in us…. In short, followers of Jesus constitute an alternative community (salt), living towards the reign of God, distinct from the world but engaged in a caring, constructive way within the world (light), with our deeds of obedience to Christ the greatest evidence of our identity and of God’s glory.   

32. For Jesus, it is most often sins against neighbor, against the poor, against children, against widows, against the outcast, against the vulnerable, that attract his greatest attention—as in the [Hebrew Scriptures] prophetic tradition.

53. Jesus refuses to declare himself an abolisher of the Law of Moses or of the prophets whose main job was to exhort Israel to keep God’s Law truly…. His teachings represent a fulfillment rather than a negation of Jewish Law…. He wants to show people how to obey the Law from the heart. Jesus sternly warns against any loosening or weakening of God’s Law. His goal is not to set aside God’s will but to do it, obey it, and teach it to others. (Matt 5:20)

56. Jesus cares about the state of our hearts, the deepest recesses of our motives, thoughts, and feelings. Example: Jesus wants us to prioritize a life path of peace-making, which is the answer to the escalating patterns of anger and hate, together with its destructive, death-dealing power.

72. Jesus says that it is God rather than people who sets the agenda for how God will relate to people, and God’s agenda is love. He is inviting us to enter this sublime freedom of love, rather than allowing the worst actions of others to entice the worst in us. 

73. People who are determined to love their enemies are the freest and the most powerful people in the world. They set their own agenda, and no one can distract them from it—making the journey through fear, through anger, even through hate, all the way to love. This is what we see in Jesus.

80. Jesus routinely appears to make God’s forgiveness of us contingent on our forgiveness of others. 81. God’s perspective: We are loved, we are understood, we are forgiven, and we are called to higher ground.

86. Mammon (Worship of Money as an End in Itself) entails turning wealth into an idol that displaces God in the human heart. It invites God’s wrath. This is why Jesus encouraged some of his followers to sell everything and give the proceeds to the poor and needy. Such idolatry is not just something in the human heart, but it is encouraged in the ethos and structures of economic life and human culture. Jesus’s answer to Mammon involves cleansing the eye of covetousness and fear, cleansing the heart of anxiety and greed, cleansing the behavior of stinginess, exploitation, and indifference to the poor—this can transform one’s relationships with the material world and economic culture—to set one free from a kind of slavery. Let enough be enough! Jesus taught: “Save up your treasures in heaven.”

Morality matters immensely to both God and human society, so laissez-faire relativism doesn’t work. 93. Even while we must make human moral judgments—as parents, teachers, governors, judges, citizens, church members, fellow humans/neighbours—we must do it in a spirit of generosity, mercy, and humility, always remembering that moral scrutiny begins with ourselves, and that ultimate judgment on a human life belongs to God alone. We are called to continuous peace-making and community-building.

98. There is a “heart,” an inner moral core, in every person. It is formed in part by what we treasure. Out of it flow life-shaping words and deeds. Action also forms character, just as character drives action—a spiritual feedback loop. 100. Overall, Jesus exhorts his followers to obey God’s will out of a humble, meek, just, merciful, pure heart that is seeking God’s kingdom (a higher road lifestyle). This builds real substance into a life and shapes our identity towards true flourishing. Jesus’s teaching is all about the solid rock of love: this leads to joy, peace, justice, and covenant love. 

121. The Greatest Commandment (agape) is the moral centre of Jesus’s moral teaching. Love God with all you have and love your neighbour as yourself…. The obligation is stated positively…. [We are never done.] Jesus pairs love of God and neighbor.… We cannot love God if we do not love our neighbor…. We cannot love neighbor without the in-filling love of God that makes neighbor-love possible. Jesus defines love in the Good Samaritan story in one word: mercy. Love requires insightful vision, heartfelt compassion, and effective action. It is a matter of doing not mere sentiment.

1. Love sees with compassion and enters into the situation of people in bondage.
2. Love does deeds of deliverance.
3. Love invites people into community.
4. Love confronts those who exclude others.

176. In John 17, Jesus prays for Christian unity, and launches a theological conviction that the unity of the church is a historic part of Christian confession. Peace and unity are not easy, and Christians are often bitterly divided in reality. But every time we Christians bear with one another, choose to seek peace, and remain in relationships that defy our natural human tendencies to selfishness, something special is happening. At these times, we see Jesus’s high priestly prayer for unity in his followers being answered. We must never give up on the quest for Christian unity; it is central to our witness.

191. Jewish listeners at the time would hear Jesus emphasizing in Matthew’s Gospel, chapters 5 to 7 (Sermon on the Mount), and 25:31-46 things like: Food for the hungry, hospitality to the stranger, almsgiving to the needy, care for the sick. These were basic expressions of justice, mercy, and love. The idea is that this kind of behaviour is what God cares about most—it  resounds throughout the prophets (Isaiah 58:6-11). Jesus identifies himself with the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, and imprisoned. What about us? 192. There will be an eternal judgment for all humans, and it will be based on how we treat our fellow human beings, especially the most vulnerable and needy. This is one of the most significant/unsettling of all Jesus’s moral teachings—an incarnational identification of the righteous Judge with the least/those who suffer/the marginalized/the broken ones. God sends them to us. He say to us a did Mother Teresa: This was me. These are my people.

In Summary, Jesus’s Moral Teaching is the Opposite Stance to Much of Contemporary Culture 

194. We look at the world, our lives, and our aspirations basically upside down, in a complete reversal of how we ought to think and live. Our religious values are shockingly often the opposite to God’s. 196. Human culture, as we have set it up, is a set of interconnected and idolatrous abominations to God, although celebrated robustly by many people. We need to repent, and change radically, to get things right (return to the path of holiness and righteousness).

• We over-hype our needs.
• We constantly seek status, importance, validation among our peers. We are willing to sacrifice others to get it.
• Jesus is deeply aware that humans lie, a lot: We lie to God, to ourselves, and to others out of shame, self-protection, or in order to manipulate the narrative.
• What is it that really matters, what makes a good, fruitful life? Jesus’s moral teaching is counter-cultural pointed in the direction of the highest good: love of God and neighbour.
• Culture reinforces faulty approaches/goals to life and selfish values. Sinful human practices and attitudes are thoroughly baked into society and its norms. We naturally strive for the wrong goals and ignore the needs of others–run with the crowd. 

David Gushee’s Healing Vision of the Deeply Moral Kingdom of God: 196.  God is all and is in all…. God wants people to give their whole-full-complete-true-pure-hearts, selves, souls, and lives to him. This is way beyond rules  and obedience. It’s devotion. It’s submission. It’s love. God wants people who are humble in heart, hungry for truth and justice, merciful, and reconciling. God wants people who will secure themselves by trusting in him rather than in foolish/prideful human strategies and schemes that are so constantly self-defeating…. God wants to radically reorient us. It is a matter of doing not mere sentiment.…. We need retraining into new creational, Jesus-like practices and attitudes. Jesus taught peacemaking, forgiveness, economic simplicity, mercy and generosity, turning the other cheek, enemy love, covenant fidelity, truth telling, Good Samaritanism, standing with the vulnerable, valuing all people, leading by serving while not seeking human honour or glory for oneself.

From his other key boo, Kindgom Ethics, (40) by David Gushee & Glen Stassen: “The biblical virtues are keys to community well-being: peace-making, hungering for justice, doing mercy, integrity, humility, and caring for the poor and the mourning. They are the way of participation in community with God.”

“Jesus taught that participation in God’s reign required the disciplined practices of a Christ-following countercultural community that obeys God in its inner communal life and by publicly engaging in works of love, justice, and protection of the dignity and sacred worth of human life.” (195)

Key Questions for Further Investigation: 1. Why have so many theologians in the history of the church avoided or repressed Jesus’s moral teaching in the Sermon on the Mount? It was the most important/central discipleship material in the early years of the church. 2. “How do we avoid a cultural moral lobotomy amidst our current crisis of affirmation?” (grande pensée Charles Taylor in Sources of the Self). AI probably will not solve this dilemma; it has no soul.