Supposing we held a contest and asked all the people of the world to vote on the spiritual figure whose life and teachings most contributed to the human race, which person do you think would win such a contest?
I think the person who would garner the largest number of votes would be Jesus.
I think that anyone who comes into contact with anything giving them knowledge of the life and teachings of Jesus emerges from the experience feeling benefited. The experience that people have of Christmas, I think, illustrates that.
At Christmastime, people encounter Jesus through films, plays, Christmas carols, books, articles, whether on him or on the lives of prominent or not-so-prominent Christians who have lived lives affected by him.
Some of these vehicles are of lesser worth than others in reflecting Jesus. But I think that anyone who comes genuinely into contact with his authentic life and teachings through any medium emerges feeling respectful and even reverential towards him.
I did a dictionary on spirituality and saw how many spiritual leaders from other faiths commonly held Jesus in high reverence. I did a dictionary on life after death and saw the same thing among residents of the other side of life, high and low. I did a dictionary on the views of galactics and the spiritual hierarchy, of this region of space, of other regions of space, of other dimensions, other domains. Jesus is held in universal respect among those who know or know of him, and used widely as an example of the perfect human being.
I think that anyone who reads, say, at least the gospels of Matthew and John in order to obtain a minimal view of the life and teachings of Jesus would be benefited and see themselves as having been benefited.
His teachings convey a life perfectly lived in service of love, truth, and peace. His actions are just and healing. His reliability is complete. If I were to look for one thing to say about him that would epitomize him, it would be that he practiced all-forgiving love, unfailing love, all-encompassing love.
Jesus himself cautioned us to build our homes on rock and not on sand. A life built upon the foundation of his teachings, in my view, would be a house built on rock.
The government of a country, when it wants a currency to be sound, anchors it to gold. Jesus’ teachings are like that gold, which anchors a currency.
I would not be at all surprised, in the events that we expect to come starting in the year 2011, if Jesus does not emerge as the one figure that everyone can turn to and discuss that will produce the greatest degree of agreement or consensus on what is reliably virtuous, desirable, practical, and admirable in the human being and human civilization.
The time of the year it becomes easiest to see this is Christmastime. But human unity is a strange thing. The unity that is achieved at Christmastime from all the activities that go on to bring us together has a habit of quickly disappearing after Christmas. It’s almost as if there’s only one day during which we can hear the message that Jesus puts out and then we run for cover.
But I believe that, as the energies rise in the New Year, we’ll be able to hear that message of unity and virtue better and better. And I predict that, when we do and when we look for a single human being whose example we can all agree on that that life and those teachings would belong to Jesus.