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Savior says. For nothing curdles the heart as much as the spirit of
revenge. “Not seven times,” Jesus says, “but, I tell you, seventy- seven
times.” (Matthew 18.22).
Jesus’ capacity to read people—to sense where it is they stand
with the Self hood—is often thoroughly kind, as it is with the para-
lytic, frozen in his misery. But it can have an edge as well. A young
man approaches Jesus and asks him what he needs to do to inherit
eternal life. Jesus looks into the man’s face, listens to his voice, and
clearly perceives that he is rather conventionally pious— though
maybe he desires to be more. Keep the commandments, he tells the
young man. Don’t murder, don’t bear false witness, don’t commit
adultery, and don’t steal. Honor your father and your mo ther.
“Teacher,” says the young man, “I have kept all these since my
youth” (Mark 10.20).
Surely Jesus sees a glint of something promising in the young
man, something that might help him pass beyond the standard,
often passive, virtues. “You lack one thing,” Jesus says. “Go, sell
what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have
trea sure in heaven; then come, follow me” (Mark 10.21). Jesus, out
of compassion for this questing young man, who lives with the con-
ventional virtues, opens up a new way of life. Sell what you have
and give it to the poor. Then the great injunction: Come, and follow
me. Throw the Self hood off and live fully in the pre sent, above time.
But the young man cannot do it. He is unable to crack the crust of
his conventional goodness. “When he heard this,” the Gospel says,
“he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many posses-
sions” (Mark 10.22).
But Jesus has given him the chance to know himself, even if the
self- knowledge he achieves is harsh. The young man thought he
had a stronger spiritual drive than he did. He thought he was ready
to enter the heaven that Jesus off ers: the heaven of the Soul here
and now. It’s a heaven that brings unity and fullness of being and a