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 119 -
The difference between a true and a false guide.
Mathael says, "Yes, Lord and my God, now everything is very clear, as clear as it is that one must believe in a God before one can love him! But the faith must not be a blind one, but instead it must be full of light, that means that one must see who and what a God is. One must have a clear and sensible comprehension of His wisdom, power and greatness and endurance, in order to then be able to go over into full love for the accepted God.
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This is certainly not easy for a person who has been captured by all sorts of mistakes through and through; but if one has a true light oneself, then one can also shed a true light soon on those in need of light. It is of course quite another thing to learn something from someone who understands this thing that he teaches in the very best way from the deepest basis, than from someone who appears to be and has overheard some things about the issue, but in the end basically understands as teacher as little of the subject as his disciple.
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The teacher with deep knowledge will make the subject easier to understand with little effort using all sorts of suitable and well-corresponding images and comparisons, while the pseudo-teacher, in order to appear all the more wise, only makes every effort to clothe the subject that is to be taught in such dark and mysterious phrases that the disciple is then a good ten times more confused after the lesson than he was before.
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I imagine things like this: The true expert teacher meets his disciple like someone who, with a great, closed lantern in the darkest night, wants to proceed in the desert exactly in a night in order not to have to suffer the great torture of heat in the day. The traveler then asks the leader immediately with the closed lantern: How will we manage in the desert without a light? Our camels and packhorses will become perplexed in such darkness and will not be moved a step further!
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But then the correct leader says: Do not worry about it! You see, there is a light in this lantern which is still closed, which, as soon as I open the door of the lantern, immediately will spread a rising sun over the whole desert! None of our beasts of burden will be perplexed!
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And so the journey is begun with the best trust. At the beginning of the journey the leader opens up only a very small window of his miraculous lantern and immediately so much light comes out that already all the stumbling blocks could be avoided very well on the way. Then the traveler thinks: Yes, with such a light it is good to travel, and the desert will present us with no problems!
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But how surprised will the traveler be when the guide opens all the little windows of the great lantern and a veritable sunlight spreads out in an instant over the whole desert, so that even the wild and vicious animals that wait here and there for a good prey take to the most gleeful flight and the peaceful birds of the sky wake up and begin to sing their cheerful little songs, as if in seriousness the sun itself had risen! That would be the light of the true guide!
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But now comes the pseudo-guide with a true night-light in the hand and says to the one who want to travel: Come and let us move through the desert! The man wanting to travel says: Will we be able to make it in the pitch-dark night with this light of yours? And the guide speaks with a mystical pathos: Friend, indeed my little lamp seems to shine out only a very weak shimmer; but it is a magical light with which one can manage extremely well even in a much darker night!
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The journey begins. The camels all become perplexed every moment and do not want to go on; for with such enlightenment their eyes only become all the more hazy, so that they then cannot see anything more. They lie down and cannot be moved on at any price.
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Then the traveler speaks: But I knew right from the start that it would not be possible to cross even the smallest desert with such a little light! What shall we do now? We are really on a miserable path now! The guide, who is secretly very puzzled, says once again very gravely: The animals are tired and have sensed wild beasts "even at a great distance "and will go no further for our best! The traveler says: But what if the wild animals smell us out and pay us a much undesired visit in such a night? Then the secretly much more worried guide reassures the worried traveler: Oh in such a night we are safe from this; for it has never been experienced that ever a traveler in such a night was bothered by wild animals! "Luckily, particularly at the beginning of the desert, no such animal comes into sight. And so guide and traveler wait for the coming of day and comfort one another until then as well as they can.
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Likewise it seems to me is the spiritual leadership, which is undertaken by a pseudo-guide. In the desert and in the night of this earthly life, where teacher and student see nothing at the same time, even the teacher who appears to be wise comforts his student by saying that one day all the secret things will be revealed on the other side. But at the same time the 'wise' teacher fears the death of his body much more than his inexperienced student; for the student has at least a blind dream-like faith, while his wise-seeming teacher lost it a long time ago."