Imagine looking at Jesus through the lens of sociology rather than religion. He had crowds of people constantly sizing him up with life and death stakes. He needed to fulfill the role of being inspirational while simultaneously steering through complex social challenges.
Have you ever considered the reasons behind his use of parables? Whether you believe in him or not we can all learn from his ability to remain relatable and powerful under such stressful public scrutiny.
Here are 10 relatable lessons from Jesus that hold up even if you don’t believe in religion.
Don’t rush to correct people who aren’t ready to hear it
There’s a huge gap between someone handing you a map and discovering the path on your own. We treasure those things that we find more than those things we’re told.
One day, while teaching an enormous crowd by the Sea of Galilee, Jesus didn’t lecture on “ways to improve yourself and be a good person.” Instead, he told the story of a farmer sowing seed on rocky ground, on thorny ground, and on good soil.
Even his inner circle asked him, ‘Why do you speak in parables?’ Essentially he replied that it was a mental sieve. Unless your mindset is primed for it, you’ll just hear a tale about farming.
But if you’re hungry for answers, that tale worms its way into your mind until you arrive at the realization by yourself. He knew if you were given the answer outright, you’d forget it by suppertime. But if you discover the answer yourself, you never forget.
Choose your inner circle carefully, not widely
Your inner circle should be like a sieve for the outside world. They’re the ones qualified to tell you when the public is poisoning your mind. Jesus utilized his closest friends as a means to remain grounded. He would retreat with his closest friends when the crowds became overwhelming.
The way he practiced this is by understanding the concentric circles of his social life. He had friends. But he had different levels of closeness. He certainly taught thousands and had 70 followers, but narrowed down to twelve men whom he allowed to live with him, eat with him, and hear his most private thoughts.
Further yet, within those twelve, he had an inner sanctum of only three people. Peter. James. John. He handpicked this fail-safe group by bringing only them with him into the most extreme private moments of His life.
You need a group of people that recognize you as a person, rather than a role or a function. Without that inner circle, you will surely burn out trying to please everyone else’s expectations of you.
Step away before burnout forces you out
Jesus understood what we now know as proactive recovery. Instead of treating down time as a luxury Jesus saw it as mandatory.
Mark 1: By rising before dawn Jesus evaded the “demand loop” while the viral success of his previous night’s healings caused the entire town to gather at his place that morning.
When his disciples tried to guilt Jesus into joining them with “everyone is looking for you,” he knew his effectiveness as a teacher depended on getting alone time.
After performing the miraculous feeding of the 5,000, he knew he needed time to recharge. Once again he showed he was smart enough to know that if he poured from an empty cup, he would burnout.
Public anger was rare; but when it showed up, it was strategic
Anger is a flare gun: If you pull it out and shoot it off every five minutes, people won’t come when you really need help.
Jesus kept his flare gun in his pocket. When he finally blew up, it communicated so much outrage because he had a reputation for being peaceful.
Through his temple outburst Jesus executed an act of holy protest with perfect timing to maximize its righteous impact. He flipped tables in righteous holy anger because the Temple system was preying on pilgrims through rigged currency exchange and high markups on animals brought for sacrifice.
Calmly and over the course of several minutes that placed him squarely in the most public of spaces, he sat down and began braiding a whip out of cords.
Jesus acted emotionally in the moment, but humanly in anticipation. He took out his frustration in the only way that it would be effective:
He didn’t chase credibility from powerful people
When you attempt to win over those in power, you are compromising your message to whatever they will tolerate. Jesus never did that. Jesus did not “frame” himself for the Pharisees; He spoke in ways to irritate them.
During Jesus’ time both social position and religious validity came from the Pharisees and Sadducees. Teachers of the era would have sacrificed everything for such approval but Jesus rejected their approval as something to avoid at all costs.
Jesus knew an important truth about power: If you’re trying to overthrow a corrupt or broken system, the leaders of that system should not like you. If they had been his fans, that would have meant he was supporting the status quo. By being at ease when leaders don’t like him, He showed that he was wholly on the side of the oppressed and marginalized.
He let people walk away
Walk away with dignity when a relationship/connection isn’t synchronized.
Jesus never shamed people into following him, he simply allowed space. A clean break allows you to save your energy for those who are reaching back.
The most famous incident where Jesus lets people walk away occurred in John 6. Upon hearing a tough teaching that pushed many away (versus4), the Scripture notes that many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
Jesus didn’t pull over and hassle them. He didn’t negotiate his standards or plead for another chance. He didn’t guilt them into following.
Instead, Jesus turned to the twelve and simply asked a very human question: “You do not want to leave too, do you?” He left the door open.
He separated dignity from status
In a society focused on who you know and where you fit, spending time with someone who feels overlooked is the most revolutionary action you can take toward their well-being.
Jesus tore apart the connection between human worth and social status. He knew that if you want to show care for someone who feels invisible (think leper, tax collector, a woman with bad reputation) the most costly gift you can offer them is your undivided attention.
The act of sharing food with someone served as a public declaration of equal status during that era. Jesus transformed public perception when he dined with society’s outcasts because eating with them represented a social status upgrade.
Silence was sometimes his strongest response
Arguing takes all your energy. It makes your spirit feel drained and depleted.
Sometimes saying nothing is guarding your peace from those who seek to take it from you. Remember you don’t have to explain yourself to everybody.
Jesus demonstrated the power of silence most memorably during his trials before Pontius Pilate and before the Sanhedrin. He knew these were not fair hearings. These were rigged trials where Jesus knew his sentence had been decided before he even arrived for questioning.
As the high priest pressed him for an answer to the absurd accusations hurled at him, Jesus remained silent (Matthew 26:63). Jesus was not being passive, he was being economical with his words.
He knew that explaining himself to those determined to misinterpret him would exhaust the Spirit he would need to endure what was to come.
He criticized hypocrisy more than obvious wrongdoing
Imagine hypocrisy as a computer virus. It appears to be functioning normally on the surface, but it’s destroying the programming that holds everything together. Hypocrisy from leaders corrupts the source code of trust we operate on as a society.
Jesus never had his most vitriolic words for the easy targets, the broken, the addicts. He saved his worst criticism for the pious know-it-alls, the religious elites.
In Matthew 23, Jesus calls them out hard. He refers to them as “whitewashed tombs.” These guys may look pretty on the outside, but if you opened them up, you’d find “dead men’s bones.”
He framed loss as part of growth, not failure
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We treat endurance like some mystical superhero power when it’s really just delayed expectations. Jesus taught endurance by reminding his followers that comfort isn’t the destination, purpose is.
Jesus didn’t see sacrifice as a sign of defeat. He saw it as part of the price that had to be paid. If your ultimate purpose is strong enough not to just feel good, but to reach your goal, then every setback becomes an opportunity instead of an catastrophe.
He kept his eyes on the purpose, which enabled him to take the ridicule and the beating without becoming derailed. He knew sacrifice was like a seed that must be planted before it can grow.
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