Jesus, The Man Who Lives Quotes

“Earthly authority displays itself in giving orders, in magnificent apparel, in hordes of servitors, in sycophantic addresses; the authority of Jesus disposes of is, by contrast, spiritual, and expresses itself in serving, not being served, in seeking to be the least instead of the greatest, the last instead of the first, in finding wisdom in the innocence of children and truth in the foolishness of men rather than in those who pass for being sagacious and experienced in the world’s ways. When we want to adulate men, we say they are godlike; but when God became Man, it was in the lineaments of the least of men.”
― Malcolm Muggeridge, Jesus, The Man Who Lives

“I cannot see that Jesus ever advocated a reform of any kind, or supported any human cause, however enlightened. His teaching ranged between the sublimest mysticism and the bluntest realism, leaving out the middle ground, the lush pastures of liberalism and goodwill, where editorialists and Media pundits graze, and stifling sirocco wind of rhetoric endlessly blows. He gave us, not a plan of action, nor even a code of ethics, certainly not a programme of reforms, but those wonderfully illuminating contradictions of his – the first to be last, the poorest the rich, the weakest the strongest, the most obscure the most celebrated. He silenced the stridency of the ego, freed the elbows and unharnessed the shoulders from their urge to push and shove, abated the will's rage and the flesh's obduracy. The meek, he told us, would inherit the earth, and he showed us how to be meek, humility being the very condition of virtue. Then, along with this heavenly roller-coaster ride whose tickets are only available for those who cannot pay, there is the hard, gritty, abject wisdom of the world, also with its own kind of appeal, and even charm, especially conveyed in Jesus's parables [whose] practical wisdom [...] cannot be faulted. Through all history's changes, the revolutions and counter-revolutions, the rise and fall of great ones, it has continued to be valid.”
― Malcolm Muggeridge, Jesus, The Man Who Lives