Apologies in advance for all the geeks that frequent my blog - this is not my normal bundle of techieness, but I like to have a place where I can record other stuff that I write, and I’m about to submit this to Mitch to go on the church website.
Taking it too phar(isee)?
I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about how much of our culture is like a pantomime. Most of us remember going to the theatre at Christmas to laugh at men dressed up as women, and sticky goo being thrown over baddies. And yet I reckon that pantomimes are actually the light side of human natures more shadowy aspects. Ugly women are quite often bad; stepmother almost always are too. Pretty girls are good, as are pretty boys. Awkward, “normal” boys are fondly remembered, but ultimately left for charming princes.
There is a small book about parables called ‘A String in the Tale’, which tries to bring back some of the cutting edge of Jesus’ parables, which is sadly lacking in our modern-day, non-Jewish familiarity with the stories. The author (whose name I forget at this point) likens the New Testament Pharisees to pantomime baddies - we know instinctively to Booo whenever they enter the stage. If we were watching a dramatisation of the Bible, we probably wouldn’t be surprised to see them wearing black, perhaps even a mask, with large, low eyebrows and a wicked moustache being twirled between the forefingers of one hand.
Unfortunately the reality is a long way from this. The Pharisees were one of the most respected of religious groups. They were looked up to, they were honoured. They were defenders of the faith, keepers of the law, scholars of the word. We would have almost definitely looked up to them, rather than booing. Even today, I believe, we still respect pharisaical aspects of peoples lives.
So what was Jesus’ problem with them? His problem was that they had placed the law above people, placed religious activity above love, placed their defense of the faith above the spreading of the word.
_Our_ problem is that we have made pantomime baddies out of the Pharisees, but have not banished their practices - less a case of “he’s behind you” and more a case of “he’s within you”….
We have created barriers of entry to our churches that were never meant to be there. We have created a complicated system of ‘law’ that is nothing to do with grace, and everything to do with a pharisaical nature. Instead of sticking to the 2 greatest commandments (”Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind”, and “Love your neighbour as yourself”) we have majored on other tenets of the law, and even laws that are in no Bible I have read. In fact, I believe that many of the “Christian” customs that we hold sacred have more roots in the middle-class than in the Bible.
Let’s take an example, hopefully without being overly controversial. The current attitude towards swearing probably bases itself on 2 main areas - the 10 commandments (”Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain”) and the book of James (all about taming your tongue). While I would never be so bold as to suggest that we should ignore either of these things, when I look around at the people I know, I do believe that this is a high barrier; we have created practically a whole dictionary of words that are ’swear’ words, and provoked a whole load of thoughtful theological discussion on whether a particular word should be added to that dictionary.
Have we suceeded in preventing people from “swearing”? Have we even prevented Christians from “swearing”? Or, in fact, have we created ways of ‘untaming’ our tongue that bypass the whole dictionary? And do we continue to make people feel awkward and tongue-tied (in the truest sense of the word) when they are in church?
I believe that this is just one example that could be given. Let us take time to look at ourselves, and our churches, and see if we can lower the barriers to entry so that all may come in. Because that’s what Jesus did, and we see to follow him, not the Pharisees.
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