Turn both your pockets and your hearts inside out and
give generously to the poor;
then your lives will be clean, not just your dishes and your hands.
I’ve had it with you! You’re hopeless, you Pharisees! Frauds!
You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but
manage to find loopholes for
getting around basic matters of justice and God’s love.
Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required.
You’re hopeless, you Pharisees! Frauds!
You love sitting at the head table at church dinners, love preening yourselves in the radiance of public flattery. Frauds! You’re just like unmarked graves: People walk over that nice, grassy surface, never suspecting the rot and corruption that is six feet under."
One of the religion scholars spoke up:
“Teacher, do you realize that in saying these things you’re insulting us?”
Jesus said,
“Yes!
and I can be even more explicit.
You’re hopeless, you religion scholars! You load people down with rules and regulations, nearly breaking their backs, but never lift even a finger to help.
You’re hopeless! You build tombs for the prophets your ancestors killed. The tombs you build are monuments to your murdering ancestors more than to the murdered prophets. That accounts for God’s Wisdom saying, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, but they’ll kill them and run them off.’
What it means is that every drop of righteous blood ever spilled from the time earth began until now, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was struck down between altar and sanctuary, is on your heads. Yes, it’s on the bill of this generation and this generation will pay.
You’re hopeless, you religion scholars! You took the key of knowledge, but instead of unlocking doors, you locked them. You won’t go in yourself, and won’t let anyone else in either.”
~Jesus, who knew a thing or two about insulting and WHO to insult
You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but
manage to find loopholes for
getting around basic matters of justice and God’s love.
Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required.
You’re hopeless, you Pharisees! Frauds!
You love sitting at the head table at church dinners, love preening yourselves in the radiance of public flattery. Frauds! You’re just like unmarked graves: People walk over that nice, grassy surface, never suspecting the rot and corruption that is six feet under."
One of the religion scholars spoke up:
“Teacher, do you realize that in saying these things you’re insulting us?”
Jesus said,
“Yes!
and I can be even more explicit.
You’re hopeless, you religion scholars! You load people down with rules and regulations, nearly breaking their backs, but never lift even a finger to help.
You’re hopeless! You build tombs for the prophets your ancestors killed. The tombs you build are monuments to your murdering ancestors more than to the murdered prophets. That accounts for God’s Wisdom saying, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, but they’ll kill them and run them off.’
What it means is that every drop of righteous blood ever spilled from the time earth began until now, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was struck down between altar and sanctuary, is on your heads. Yes, it’s on the bill of this generation and this generation will pay.
You’re hopeless, you religion scholars! You took the key of knowledge, but instead of unlocking doors, you locked them. You won’t go in yourself, and won’t let anyone else in either.”
~Jesus, who knew a thing or two about insulting and WHO to insult
14 comments:
Craig’s hypocrisy is equal to the Pharisees.
1. He quotes a writer who tries to recruit Augustine for his argument that Christianity gave birth to sexual ethics: Augustine who took a slave as a concubine when still a teen, had a son by her, dumped her 15 years later to marry an heiress but then chose to become a celibate priest.
2. BTW, Christianity slowly adopted monogamy because Roman society was adamant about monogamous marriage. Christianity didn’t invent it.
3. God seems just fine with many cultural values. Patriarchs with several wives; sex with slavery girls; normal Christians with several wives.
You confuse "insult" with "speaking the truth"...in this case about the behavior of the religious leaders of the time. "Insult" would pretending those like Craig, Stan or myself are akin to Pharisees merely be repeating what Scripture says about any given behavior. To point out sinfulness has nothing to do with our own situation, as it is merely a statement of fact...a truth claim...in reference to the behavior of another, or in our cases, a general commentary on behaviors we see in the world today. Should a specific group...the LGBT community, for example...take offense, that's too bad. Their defensiveness means nothing as regards the truth spoken about their behavior. It's not a matter of posturing ourselves as better. It's merely speaking the truth about what it put forth as NOT sinful, which in reality clearly and unambiguously is according to Scripture. Unlike the Pharisees, we have no power to enforce the will of God, yet YOUR kind have sought, and have to a great extent done just that. The difference is your "hate crimes" laws and "equality" laws seek to enforce that which is in opposition to and rebellion against God's will.
Marshal, per usual, is days late and dollars short. Stan is praising the Pharisees for the very reason that Marshal praises himself.
The Pharisees pointed out to Jesus that, according to scripture, he and his disciples were sining by working in the Sabbath. It didn’t go well.
Mostly because Jesus identified the brutality that the Pharisees and people like Marshal, Craig, and Stan hold in common.
Well, Craig is usually a 1000% better than Marshall at not letting his psychotic brutality show. But he’s just lost all control in trying to find Trump innocent of full on anti-Semitism. And then Craig goes full anti-Semitic himself.
1. Criticizing Israeli policy is anti-Semitic.
2. Defining 70% of American Jewish voters as stupid, isn’t.
Jesus. How far Into corrupt brutality is Craig going to follow Marshall?
Now Craig anxiously tries the dodge and diversion of a lie that what I wrote above says he supports Trump (his go to dodge for all his agreements with Trump’s brutality).
Craig, obviously I didn’t say you support Trump. I said you tried to show that Trump wasn’t anti-Semitic in what’s he’s said as President of the US the last few days. Doubtless you tried because you felt implicated in the judgment of Jews and other moral people around the world. But you were clumsy in trying to support yourself.
You outed your own anti-Semitic feelings.
What is Jesus" purpose in engaging "the Pharisee's harshly? What is His motivation? What does He hope to accomplish?
I would suggest that overall, Jesus confronts the Pharisees so very strongly and their sin was a sin of arrogance. They presume to tell people what God thanks and what God commands.
Further, those commands are almost always commands more directed towards women and marginalized groups. They missed the weightier matters of Justice freedom and liberty and Grace. Because of all the rules that they had upon the backs of others, they push people away from God because they presume to speak for God when they are preaching the opposite of Grace, a rather ugly legalism. And again, over and over, they are not on the side of the poor in the women and the marginalized. For all those reasons, I think that is why Jesus was so harsh with the Pharisees.
What does he hope to accomplish? Protecting the poor and the marginalized from the oppression of the oppressor and the arrogant. Clearly. As he said right at the beginning of his ministry, he had come to preach good news to the poor freedom for the captive. The Pharisees on the other hand, did not have good news for the poor or Liberty for the captives. They were the oppressors.
1. It wasn’t because they were rule breakers. You agreed with Stan that they were admirable rule keepers.
So, rule keeping doesn’t keep them from hell. You should write a note to self.
2. It was because they were choosing religious rules over loving the widow, the orphan, the prisoner, the foreigner, the Other, etc.
So, another note to yourself: we do not heavily criticize you from our own authority or by our own preferences. We warn you of your corrupt faith because Jesus is clear about the core redemption of his ministry: go, you are free to love all others; don’t listen to haters.
But you are continuingly using your Will to stop your ears to his words.
I do want to say this, Craig. I like your questions. These are precisely the right questions to ask. I will write more about this when I'm at my computer, but I do commend you for asking these questions, follow this trail where it goes. And look to the actual text and context of Jesus interactions with the Pharisees and not traditions or soft, pat, inch deep shallow answers.
Why was Jesus so harsh on the Pharisees? Jesus was famously a friend of sinners. He hung out with prostitutes, thieves, the sexually immoral, political radicals, zealots, he was a friend of sinners. If the Pharisees were so bad, if they were Sinners, why was he not their friend? What is it specifically about the behaviors of Pharisees the Jesus could not tolerate?
Why was Jesus, the tolerant and long suffering, NOT tolerant and so very harsh with these, by most accounts, good and holy men of God?
Precisely the right question.
"I would suggest that overall, Jesus confronts the Pharisees so very strongly and their sin was a sin of arrogance. They presume to tell people what God thanks and what God commands."
This is inaccurate. They were among the religious leaders and as such teaching people about what God thinks and commands(evident for their purposes in the Scriptures of the time as it is evident in our own). You reject this reality because it requires you to obey that which conflicts with sins you champion as not sinful. f
But their sin was their hypocrisy in posturing as devout followers of the laws they invented and imposed on ALL who were not in their favor. They put the appearance of piety over actual pious devotion to God. They ignored or were ignorant of the intention behind the law...as are you. There's was a works-based practice. But Christ wasn't rejecting the Law and doesn't even now where it concerns itself with moral behavior. Reminding those like yourself about His moral commands is not acting akin to Pharisees, but simply stating the facts regarding God's will.
I wouldn’t mind if Craig were to demonstrate what’s false.
He just disappears instead. Can’t blame me.
Art,
I agree that hypocrisy was the most often mentioned sin of Pharisees, but I'd suggest that arrogance was a part of the problem as well.
Or pops up like a garden mole with just as much blind, empty snark for “demonstration.”
Craig,
One has to be arrogant to be a hypocrite, believing one can act contrary to what one claims is proper. But in reality, my response was not specific to that one word used by Dan in the comment to which my response referenced.
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