Love him as yourself and start practicing. As we are told in the very first words of the earliest gospel, which is the gospel of Mark, the earliest words of the Bible are these, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel.” The word repent is a radical change of mind. So he is unlovely…a radical change is going to change him into loveliness…a radical change. So someone is really a bore, you turn him around radically. You go right down to the roots, not just a little pruning of the tree. Suppose he were or she were the most wonderful being in the world. You know, some people don’t even want that. One fellow in New York City during the last war, he hated Roosevelt, hated him. I said why? Well, he said, “I can’t tell you…he thinks he’s a king and we don’t want any kings in this country. He makes his son Elliott a general when other boys far better qualified are privates…he’s a general.” I said, “So what? Forget it. You know the law, don’t you? This is a principle.” And so, he said, “No. You know what I do in the morning? I get before the mirror, while I am shaving I’m telling him off, and do I tell Roosevelt off!” I said, “Who are you hurting? So you are looking into the mirror and you’re telling Roosevelt off, what he is, that he’s a bum, he’s a this, he’s that, and he thinks he’s a king.” I said, “Why do you do it?” He said, “Neville, there isn’t a play on Broadway that I can get into for under ten dollars— oh, in a morning I spend, say, five minutes on my face and in five minutes telling him off I have such fun—there’s no play on Broadway running two hours that’s going to amuse me to the extent that this does for five minutes.” So he wouldn’t give it up. He didn’t want to see Mr. Roosevelt as a noble person, he didn’t want to. He just hated him. He was the only child of devoted parents and he had lots of money himself, but he didn’t want any part of Mr. Roosevelt. And no matter what I would say, he would agree with me in words but not in practice. And so I’d say so-and-so is really is a lovely person and you hated him because of some reason you haven’t explained…you don’t want to know he’s a lovely person. And you encounter that all the time. We had someone home last night, we went off to dinner, went to a lovely dinner and there were four of us. So when we came home, the chap in the party of four—we went over to this place called Scam on top of this building, and had a lovely meal, lovely atmosphere. So when I came back I was…she’s the aunt of this boy, but I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting his father and his father is her brother; he’s gone from this world and the mother of his boy is gone too. I said I only had the pleasure of meeting his mother. Now she doesn’t like the mother and the mother is gone, vanished from this world. So I told her what a lovely, gracious lady she always had been in my world, and I didn’t want any disturbance. I don’t care what you think of her, as far as I’m concerned she’s a gracious lady. I could only see her in my mind’s eye as the loveliest, loveliest, tender, kind lady and mother of my friend. Well now, he was totally intrigued because he loved his mother dearly. He admired his father, but the father is the brother of this aunt, and he doesn’t want to offend the aunt, yet he knows that he loves his mother. I didn’t care what the aunt thought or what he thought, I’m simply talking about the lovely lady I met. I always said I wish I had met his father, but he died. Yet she could not be reconciled. She had an opinion of this dead sister-in-law that is not pleasant and to her she couldn’t see the need for overcoming that dislike. The woman’s dead, but she couldn’t falsify an opinion. Here are two opinions of the same person and radically different. So I say fall in love. God loved us, that’s why we love. I couldn’t love unless he first gave me the gift of love. Every time I love it’s a gift. He gave me every passion in the world so I can exercise it. He gave me hate, he gave me violence, he gave me everything. Then he gave me the greatest gift of all, himself which is love. And I can exercise it. What could I get that God didn’t give me? He’s giving me himself and he’s everything. Yes, he’s the thief and he’s the one from whom he stole. You read it carefully in scripture. What a book! It’s the Book of Books; it’s the Word of God. You want to find out who he is? You read it, read the Book of Job. He doesn’t understand why these things are happening to me, the innocent victim of this horrible experiment. But it’s worth it: “Let us make man in our image.” Man didn’t request it. Everything is dead and it’s dead, it can’t be right or wrong, and it can’t feel anything. Now he’s going to endow it with the capacity to feel, and put it through hell that it may receive the gift of God which is himself. And he puts him through all the things. But Job doesn’t understand until the end of the last chapter: “I heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee.” The eye is open, all now can be understood; and if you understand all, you see it all. What author would condemn the actors for playing the parts beautifully that he conceived? Would he rave about the thief if he conceived the thief if he played it well? He’d ball him out if he didn’t. If the thief came off that stage without getting the sneer and the hate of people, then he didn’t play the part well, and the author is disgusted with that actor and would fire him. I would. “Play it my way [...]…you’re not telling the part as I conceived it.” Therefore, when the audience hisses the one on the stage, who should they hiss? He’s unseen: the author. He’s in the wings, can’t see him, yet he’s written the whole thing. So you go and replace the actors. They’re all puppets wearing masks; and you want to blame something you call that author out. And he’s always unseen. Well, God is unseen and he’s playing all the parts in the world. There’s nothing but God! Someone writes a great symphony and you get the 150 to play it. Well, the one who composed it and he hears all these strange things that he didn’t intend, he isn’t satisfied. He’s going to replace that musician. He just cannot bring out what I want to hear. That’s what I intended and he’s not bringing it out. So the one who composed it, he wants to hear it as he is hearing it. He wants the perfect actors, the perfect players. And in the end, if there’s any praise for the symphony…yes, you will praise the players, they did a beautiful job of interpreting what one man conceived…well, one: “Hear, O Israel”—this is the First Commandment—“the Lord, our God, the Lord is one.” So you start practicing revision. It’s called in the Bible repentance. And here in the modern day, here we understand today what revision means; but repentance has become so barnacled that it doesn’t convey anything to man but remorse and regret, and that’s not what it is at all. So today the churches speak of repentance and you have to repent and do your penance and do all these things. That hasn’t a thing to do with repentance. So in my writing I have [...] it out and I have changed the name from repentance to revision, because today we understand what revision means. Maybe a year from now or ten years from now it will have barnacles on it too, and somebody will come and change it again, and scrape off the barnacles again, and give it a new name. We have words that have changed their meanings. In fact, today we almost hate to say…now I have brought in a lovely bouquet of flowers and I say, “Darling, I have brought you a bunch of pansies.” Well, my wife understands what I mean; the average person raises the eyebrows. The word pansy has changed its meaning. Pansy used to be a girl’s name. All these change over a period of time. So you go back in the Bible and the translator has to get the original meaning. That is all that it means. If I could get the original meaning in the language that I am using that’s all that I need. But if I am using the same word that has changed its meaning over the years, I am going to confuse people. And so giving a good translation is as accurate a meaning of the author as possible, and so that is what we need. We need revisions all the time because words change meanings.339 ¶39