Yeshua 1: you can intend to perfect your person

 This is the first of a series to be posted on Facebook and on my blog, promotethepreamble.blogspot.com/.

Yeshua 1: Be perfect; Matthew 5:48, 30 CE

As a boy, 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 and church preserves doctrine, 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 personal curiosity facilitated the following conclusion: Yeshua, the uncelebrated 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 imagine 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, and that seems OK.
We hear, “There’s nothing new under the sun”. That includes goodnesswhich; it existed before awareness emerged. I want to collaborate with contemporary people to benefit from Yeshua’s and other ancient 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 their 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 do not know the ineluctable truth and admit that Yeshua could have been there at the beginning. I don’t think so, but don’t know.
I plan this series 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 his thoughts are worthy. I hope to publish a new item each Sunday.
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.

Updated on 1/17/26 to improve clarity.

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.