3. John, the Baptizer, Paving the Way

Ananda: That is very interesting. I really like to hear more about this great man -- John, the Baptizer. 

John: The available stories of Jesus begin with John, the baptizer, preaching the good news of the Kingdom of God.  I don’t have much reliable information of what kind of job he had had, or how he started preaching. But I know that he proclaimed the good news of God’s kingdom with such power that his words shook human hearts. He was widely accepted as a prophet of God. We have a long chain of great prophets in our history. A prophet is one who conveys God’s message to people. He was called baptizer because he baptized those who accepted his message.

The Kingdom of God is at hand-- that was the good news John proclaimed. The king would not be God, but a man who represents God.  He would be anointed by God.  Anointing by holy oil is the official ceremony in our nation for appointing a king.  As he would be appointed by God, he would rule with God’s spirit and might. Hence, he is denoted by the term Messiah or Christos, which means the anointed one. Our scriptures also call him the Son of God, which implies that he rules representing God, the true king of the world.

John’s idea of God’s kingdom differed from the popular notion in an important way. Most of the people thought that God’s kingdom would be the same as a Jewish empire. That is, the Roman Empire would be replaced by a Jewish empire. In other words, the drama would continue the same, only the actors would change their roles. The rulers would become slaves, and the slaves would become rulers. Or, in other words, all Jews would become the citizens of God’s kingdom, and the non-Jews would become their slaves.

John couldn’t swallow such a naive idea of God’s kingdom.  He believed that God’s kingdom could not be the same as a Jewish kingdom. God, the creator of the whole world, cannot be owned by any one community, so God’s kingdom has to be universal. It has to be open to the whole of human race, irrespective of all national or racial boundaries.  

If that is how God’s kingdom is, who will be its citizens?  Within the Jewish community, there were certain groups of extremists who adhered to very strict observance of rules and rituals of cleanliness and holiness. They claimed that only those who followed the rules and rituals like them would become the citizens of the kingdom of God.  They called themselves righteous people, and the others sinners.  John was not willing to accept such a spurious view.  He claimed that only those who do good to their fellow beings in their day-to-day life are the righteous people.  The king will accept only such people to his kingdom as citizens. The chance to be a citizen is open to everybody. There is only one condition:  Turn from evil deeds, and start doing good deeds.

The Jewish people claimed to be the children of Abraham, a great godly man who lived about two thousand years ago.  John, the baptizer, made it clear that no one can claim the citizenship in God’s kingdom just by being a descendent of Abraham. John laughed at this idea saying that God doesn’t care if someone is a child of Abraham or not, for God is powerful enough to make children for Abraham from stones. In his garden, the only thing God, the farmer, cares about is whether someone is fruitful or not.  

John’s interpretation of God’s kingdom was a blow to the Jewish religious leaders, who were comfortable with their petty beliefs about it. They were afraid to give up their spurious image of a Jewish God, and to accept the image of a universal God as projected by John. Their position and power in the community depended upon the existence of such a petty god, and they were not willing to give up their power and position. The extremists saw an enemy in John. But the common people, who had nothing to lose, gladly accepted the message of John. They accepted John's invitation to be baptized by him as a sign of their decision to start a new life.

Ananda: Let me put the idea of the Kingdom of God in my own words. In our real world, life involves a great deal of struggle and suffering. In order to understand our situation, and to improve it, we create an ideal world in our imagination, in fact, the best possible we can think of. Thus, the Kingdom of God, which is perfect, serves as a model to evaluate the imperfect kingdoms of men. Now, the question is this: What makes the Kingdom of God perfect?

According to the Jewish extremists, all citizens of the Kingdom of God observe the Jewish religious rules and rituals. The problem with our real world, according to them, is the presence of people who do not follow the Jewish religion strictly.  John, the baptizer, was really a genius to revolt against such a spurious idea. He rightly pointed out that the problem with our world is the presence of evil, and in the Kingdom of God, the ideal world, there would be no evil.  

John: True. That is exactly what the extremists thought about the Kingdom of God. They couldn’t tolerate anyone following some other religious beliefs and practices. It was circumcision and Sabbath that mainly distinguished Jewish people from others. Circumcision is the initiation ceremony that makes someone a Jew, and Sabbath is the observance of the seventh day of the week as a holy day. The Kingdom of God, for them, consisted of only those who followed the Jewish religion. Their attempt to convert the real world to the Kingdom of God was by converting more and more people from other cultural backgrounds to Judaism. Accept Jehovah as God, accept the Jewish scriptures as the authoritative written revelation of God, accept circumcision, and observe Sabbath-- this was the way of salvation as prescribed by them.  

John’s prescription was simple: Do good. It absolutely doesn’t make any difference whether you have Jehovah as God or not, whether you accept Jewish scriptures or not, or whether you accept circumcision and Sabbath or not.  

The extremists classified people into righteous and sinners based on the criterion of the observance of rituals, mainly Sabbath.  All those who failed to observe the rituals and holy days as they expected were branded as sinners.  John used a different criterion:  Those who do good deeds are righteous, and those who do evil deeds are sinners. 

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