Yeshua 1: Be perfect

 This is the first of a series to organized by thinker's name, initial priority, and the thought.

Yeshua 1: Be perfect
After desire to choose goodness kicked in, sometime before age 7, I often heard, “Phil, accept Jesus as your lord and savior,” or “Jesus is my Lord”, or, on Sundays, “Accept God”. Recently the title “Christ” competes. Public collaboration is too brief to pursue civic meaning, so goodness gets repressed. Often, writers relegate goodness to mystery, using the phrase “the good”. In my 9th decade, I work to discover and practice goodness-which-motivates-good-behavior.
In my 80th year, I happened to discover “Yeshua”. Pursuing curiosities facilitated this conclusion: Yeshua, the unknown person, lived 2000 years ago in Judea and discussed political philosophy in Galilee and Jerusalem. I try to discover Yeshua’s ancient influence by focusing on goodness evidenced in the complete Bible – New Testament (CJB and NKJV) and Old Testament (chabad.org/torah-texts/). The books therein record controversial constructs by mystery-entrepreneurs – writers who suggest powers mysteriously higher than good behavior.
Expanding advocacy for A Civic People of the United States, initiated in 2013, I now promote goodness-which-motivates-good-behavior, sometimes shortening to “goodnesswhich”. In the recent 2000 years, humankind discovered and pursues goodness Yeshua may not have taught. Therefore, many modern Homo sapiens practice modern goodness, often never having discovered Yeshua.
We hear, “There’s nothing new under the sun”. I want to collaborate with contemporary people to benefit from Yeshua’s and other thinkers’ messages that advocate good behavior.
Of all the messages I’ve encountered, the most impactful is this: Each Homos sapiens may and can choose to pursue perfect behavior, no matter how bad present performance may be. From Yeshua, this notion comes as a command to a disobedient people: “Therefore, be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect”, Matthew 5:48. This command also means that individuals and groups may and can image the Father, which is declared in Genesis 1:26-28. The Bible offers evidence that Yeshua was aware of Genesis 1.
I plan to share suggestions of goodness-which-motivates-good-behavior by priorities I perceive, organized by the thinker’s name in their sequence. Thus, “Be perfect” is Yeshua 1. I will post this serial on Facebook and on my blog, https://promotethepreamble.blogspot.com/ in the folder “goodnesswhich”. As much as I can, I will be saying, “Consider Yeshua and others”, for example: Consider what Agathon thought and here’s why.
I copyright, not to constrain but to preserve my opportunity to express my ideas again or improve them. I write to invite fellow Homo sapiens to collaborate, in order to pursue the ineluctable truth.

Copyright©2026 by Phillip R. Beaver. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted for the publication of all or portions of this paper as long as this complete copyright notice is included.