The Father of All
Jesus further reasoned,
“Sin will overcome us if we slay such aggressors. Therefore it is not proper for you to kill the descendents of Moses and our friends. What should we gain, O Father, Husband of the Goddess of Fortune, and how could we be happy by killing our own kinsmen? O Lord of All, although these men, overtaken by greed, see no fault in killing one’s family or quarreling with friends, why should we, with knowledge of the sin, engage in these acts?”
Jesus addressed the Lord as ‘Father’ because the Lord is the origin and maintainer of all beings. And as the Husband of the Goddess of Fortune, He the real object of all pleasures of the senses. By using these significant words, Jesus hints that the Lord should understand what would satisfy Jesus’ senses. But the Lord is not meant for satisfying our senses. However, if we try to satisfy the desires of the Lord, then automatically our own senses become satisfied. This is the mystery of devotional service to the Lord. Materially, everyone wants to satisfy his own senses, and wants God to be the order supplier for such satisfaction. The Lord will satisfy the senses of the living entities as much as they deserve, but not to the extent that they may covet. But when we take the opposite path—trying to satisfy the senses of the Lord without desiring to satisfy our own senses—then all our desires are satisfied by the grace of the Lord. Jesus’ deep affection for community and family members was exhibited due to his natural compassion for them. Therefore he was unwilling to see them destroyed by the Lord’s anger. Everyone wants to enjoy his opulence with his relatives. Jesus feared that if his relatives attacked him, the authorized representative of the Lord, the Lord would kill them all, and thus he would be unable to share his opulence of spiritual enlightenment with them. This is a typical miscalculation of materialistic consciousness.
The transcendental life, however, is different. Since the devotee wants to satisfy the desires of the Lord, he can, Lord willing, enjoy all kinds of opulence for the service of the Lord, and if the Lord is unwilling, he will not accept anything. Jesus did not want to be the cause of the Lord annihilating his relatives. Jesus was thinking like this because he apparently forgot that the Lord had already decided long ago to punish the rabbis and Pharisees, and that he was only to become an instrument for the Lord’s plan. This fact is, of course, disclosed in other books of the Bible. As a natural devotee of the Lord, Jesus did not want the Lord to retaliate against his miscreant relatives, but factually it was the Lord’s plan from long before that they should all be defeated. The devotee of the Lord does not want to retaliate against the wrongdoer, but the Lord does not tolerate any mischief done to the devotee. The Lord can excuse a person who offends Him, but He excuses no one who has harmed His devotee. Therefore the Lord was determined to punish the reprobate rabbis, although Jesus wanted to excuse them.
According to Scriptural injunctions there are six kinds of capital aggressors: 1) a poisoner, 2) an arsonist, 3) one who attacks with deadly weapons, 4) one who plunders riches, 5) one who occupies another’s land, and 6) one who kidnaps another’s wife. No sin is incurred by killing such aggressors. Killing criminal aggressors is quite befitting an ordinary person, but Jesus was not an ordinary man. He was saintly by character, and therefore he wanted to deal with them in saintliness. According to Scriptural law, a saintly person should not slay aggressors, especially those who are also family members. Jesus thought that in this case, the Lord should consider the special type of aggressors, namely his own relatives, rabbis, the Pharisees, etc. Because they were relatives and also religious teachers, Jesus thought that He should not take the severe steps necessary against ordinary aggressors. Besides that, saintly persons are inclined to forgive. Therefore Jesus may have thought that it was not proper for his Father to vanquish the descendants of Moses and David on his account. How could Jesus be happy by becoming the cause of the Lord’s destroying his kinsmen?
Such injunctions of mercy for saintly persons are usually more important than any personal emergency. Jesus considered that rather than invoke the power of the Lord to defeat his kinsmen for personal advantage, it would be better to forgive them on grounds of religion and saintly behavior. He did not, therefore, consider such retaliation profitable simply for temporary bodily happiness. After all, the pleasures derived from the body are impermanent, so why should he risk his eternal salvation by the sin of causing the downfall of his own kinsmen? Jesus wanted to point out to the Lord that, as Husband of the Goddess of Fortune, he should not induce Jesus to take a course of action that would ultimately bring about misfortune. The Lord, however, never brings misfortune to anyone, especially His devotees.
Although Jesus’ relatives’ minds were overtaken by greed and they saw no fault in killing him or persecuting his disciples, how could Jesus, who could see the crime in destroying a family, tolerate these acts of violence? Especially when he foresaw the terrible revenge Lord would wreak on the entire Jewish society as a result. However, a preacher is not supposed to abscond when some rival party confronts him, but defeat them by spiritual power. Under such a moral obligation, Jesus could not refuse to meet the fate designed by the Pharisees, though the ultimate result would be their certain destruction. Jesus compassionately considered that the other party might be blind to the effects of such an offense. He, however, could foresee the evil consequences and therefore could not accept the challenge. According to the highest logic of Scriptural morality, an obligation is actually binding only when the effect is good, but when the effect is destructive, then no one can be bound by obligation. Considering all these pros and cons, Jesus wanted to escape and prevent the terrible carnage that would result from the persecution of his mission.