Beyond Witnessing: Understanding Jesus’s Invitation to Personal Experience

Did the apostles truly comprehend his teachings?

The New Testament implies all its teachings derive directly from Jesus. Everything in it is either directly attributable to him or suggested by his teachings.

In short, the religion presented in the New Testament is Jesus’s religion. After all, who would best know what Jesus said other than the eye-witness apostles?

Sure, they were there. Yes, they saw it first hand. But let’s ask a more important question, indeed the most important: did they comprehend what Jesus meant?

It’s one thing to witness something. It’s quite another to fully understand it.

And if they failed to grasp his meanings? If, even with hearts full of good intentions, they remembered it erroneously, how do we separate his messages from the apostle’s messages?

I’ve struggled with this for a long time.

Finally, I found a clue to help decipher and separate the two: the Jesusonian Signature. Each of the messages that come directly from Jesus bears a unique pattern, and it’s always the same. He was nothing if not consistent and of course that extends to his teaching as well.

Jesus’s signature is an invitation to personal experience.

He invites people to try what he’s talking about, to sample his teaching on their own, to experiment with them. For Jesus, spiritual concepts and principles can be lived out. They’re something you can act upon, even if only in your own inner experience.

They are so much more than a mere intellectual idea with which you assent or decline.

Forgiveness

Like I wrote in the article The Atonement Idea of Forgiveness Is a Bad Copy of a True Masterpiece divine forgiveness — as a fact — is available from God all the time. However, it’s not available — as an experience — until you come to grips with it.

How do you do that?

By forgiving others first. You start by being the forgiver. In that way, you get a small taste of forgiveness before taking a whole bite. You try it out to see the positive effect it has on others.

Jesus highlights this in The Father’s Prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…”

By offering it first and observing it second, you open the door to understanding one side of the experience and prepare to receive divine forgiveness yourself, when and as you’re ready.

Connecting with God via the spirit within

Jesus taught his followers that, when they had made their prayers to the Father, they should remain for a time in silent receptivity to afford the indwelling spirit the better opportunity to speak to the listening soul. — The Urantia Book, 146:2.17 (1641.1)

Stephen Covey also beautifully articulates this idea about the two complementary halves of communication with his famous maxim, “Seek to understand, then be understood”.

God is all things, and that includes being a personality. With the practice of listening for that small, still voice within, you engage in the full cycle of communication between persons.

While for some it might happen infrequently, it’s not strange that God wants to commune with us. To have a give and take, to both express and absorb, we must practice both halves of communication. Before we can receive, we must practice opening our attitude to receiving.

Your earthly father is the starting point for relating to your spiritual father

Jesus deeply understood the nature of families and knew that growing up in a family is a more or less universal experience. This universality is one reason why Jesus couched his teachings about relationship with God in the metaphor of family.

God is the spiritual creator of everyone, and in that sense, he’s also our spiritual father. Long before you learn about the concept of a spiritual creator, let alone build a personal awareness of him, you’re aware of your earthly father, and develop a relationship with him.

The respect and parental love expressed by real fathers — true fathers — for their children is a tiny demonstration of the divine pattern of affection, respect and regard God has for us as his spiritual children.

Now, many people don’t get the benefit of genuine fatherly love in this life: my father certainly didn’t, and neither did his father. For those unfortunate souls, the journey of discovering the Universal Father’s love takes a longer and more circuitous path.

For you, God’s love might hide behind an insurmountable wall of emotional anguish. While it seems too high to climb or too broad to breach, no blockage is infinite, no pain is forever. He is always there, forever waiting with patience to embrace you once you arrive, as you are, wholly and without reservation.

Therefore settle in your philosophy now and forever: To each of you and to all of us, God is approachable, the Father is attainable, the way is open; the forces of divine love and the ways and means of divine administration are all interlocked in an effort to facilitate the advancement of every worthy intelligence of every universe to the Paradise presence of the Universal Father. — The Urantia Book, 5:1.8 (63.6)

Love your neighbor as yourself

Often expressed as the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, the key here is regarding yourself well, i.e., loving yourself.

For most of us, thinking well about ourselves comes naturally, it’s the first half of the experience. Of course, we want the best for what’s best in us. Understanding that love is the best way to regard others is a straightforward path.

For some though, and this was me for decades, thinking highly of ourselves is a massive struggle.

No voice wounds like the critical voice within. The battle to replace that voice with new thoughts, better words, and supportive mental habits represents a titanic fight to escape self-imposed darkness and into the light. Once you succeed though, extending that emotional and psychological regard to others comes naturally.

Offering a loving attitude toward yourself, on your own internal ground is an act you live out, and it prepares you for even greater acts of love.

If you find teachings that can’t be acted upon in your own experience, you know you’re no longer in the realm of Jesus’s teaching. You’re walking the path of someone else’s religion.

Jesus’s claims about experience with spirit are testable.

You can try them out yourself. Your results may vary, just like all personal experience varies, but, he offers an avenue of testing available to everyone regardless of race, creed, gender, education, social standing, or any other aid or support to human development.

Anyone, anywhere, at any time can evaluate his core idea about religious experience: it is an awareness of a personal connection with God.

Jesus lived that out as an example for everyone and showed we can sample it ourselves, in the private and unchallengeable realm of our inner personal life.