The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 205 -
On the powerlessness of humans.
I say, "Friend, look up at the stars! Do you know them and do you understand what they are and why they exist? Should they therefore not exist because no man has been able to understand them so far? Do you understand what the sun and the moon are? Should they therefore not exist because you do not understand them?!
2
Do you understand the wind, the lightning, the thunder, the rain, the frost, the snow, the ice? Should all that not exist because you and all other people do not understand such things?!
3
Do you understand the thousand species of animals, their forms and their characteristics? Do you understand the world of plants and their forms? Do you know what light and what heat is?!
4
Should all that not exist because you and all other people cannot understand it?!
5
Do you understand life, then, and how you can see, hear, feel, taste and smell? Should man not see, hear, feel, taste and smell because he cannot understand all that?!
6
But since there are so many things in this material world which humanity can never fully understand, so go and think now a little and then give Me your opinion!"
7
Shabbi says, "Lord and Master full of divine power! I do not need to think it over much, I have already understood everything that you wanted to say to me with this. You wanted to direct me and show me that in investigating the spheres of higher wisdom things are just the same as in the sphere of material creation. We people understand actually nothing of this except the outermost image and what we can perceive with our coarsest material senses and what we can distinguish in the form, the colour, the smell and the taste of created things. Oh, how little and actually nothing man understands and knows, and yet he considers himself to be well-versed in wisdom and is proud of his miserable bit of knowledge! And what is that which he knows? Nothing, but absolutely nothing!
8
Oh, how blind and foolish are all people! They cannot even manage to see that they are nothing and cannot see or understand that they are nothing and do not see anything. The grass grows, and the seeing and feeling man rejoices in it; but what is involved to create grass and make it grow and in the same way to maintain it always - which mortal can see this?!
9
Adam, Henoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Elijah were certainly the wisest men that the Earth has ever borne; they had much of the light of God in them. But how the grass springs up, grows, brings seed, and how the circumstances come together in the seed so that an eternally large number and variety of the same type of grass can come forth - all the named fathers of wisdom had certainly never dreamed about!
10
But we do not even know how the very simplest moss grows and multiplies, and how the little worm writhes in the dust, what can we say then about the elements and about the distant stars?! But since we people know nothing, we know and understand even less who and what the stars are, why and from what they were made!
11
And behold, great and eminent master, you wanted to direct me, by pointing out my complete lack of knowledge, and say: God, the very wisest, places much before the eyes of man and before all his external senses and through these at the same time before the senses of the soul in order to force man to think. But the explanation must be sought by man himself; for if God gave it to him, man would become very idle and in the end would become quite inactive and lazy above all.
12
For what a person has once taken in and understood, his lazy nature has no benefit in any longer, it is amply filled with general experience and needs therefore no new proof any longer. And so surely man would act the same way in the purely spiritual sphere, if he understood as clear as daylight what the great prophets had written from God in the books of wisdom. He would soon go to sleep and in the end not think about anything any more; what should a man think about, if he already understands everything?!
13
God knows therefore very well how He has to maintain the people so that they think, want and finally must be very active; it is the same in all things - beware of idleness!
14
I know see very well that the story of the Messiah and all things concerning him would not have made by far the active impression on me if I had understood a minimum of all the appropriate texts from Isaiah. I would have at most laughed at the three astronomer kings if they had come to me with their mystical tirades of wisdom; and it would have been no better for anyone else who had come to me in the same respect!
15
But since everything has remained for me in a dim belief, I now feel an all the greater blessing because what was so hard and dubious to believe has now spread itself before my eyes so clearly and I now see before me Him for whom all the Jews including me have been waiting for so longingly! Lord and Master, have I understood you or not?"