This is because when he has taken the time to consider a point of definition when it comes to Jesus Christ and his life, my eyes are opened to consider it too. I may not have seen the point to be considered if it weren’t for his consideration of it. So for me, the value of what he has written is not diminished because our opinions sometimes conflict. For the most part, our opinions are balanced. I’m not sure if I could ever say he has supplied me with what is true about Jesus more than the scriptures have. That seems to be the task of the Holy Ghost. But he has supplied me with greater insight of the details of Christ’s life, His person, and His Process (seeing that the capital “H” comes in handy sometimes).
And maybe it is knowing the evils of people and how they responded to Jesus that gives me the greater insights. When I read the New Testament in the past (before reading books like Farrar’s), I was not able to completely grasp the historical background of the setting. I was not able to see where the societal leaders of that day were coming from since our present society is different from theirs. Yet we have incorporated some of the same general imbalanced processes in different specific ways. Asceticism is still alive and kicking even though Hedonism is claimed by so many to be their god.
Today I was reading about the Sabbath Day and how the Jewish leaders for generations had created complicated ascetic laws to force the people to obey. And when the people did obey them, this gave honor and glory to them – to the leaders who socially enforced these pseudo laws. It took the glory and honor from God and gave it to them. They were the gods of their society. This is what they desired.
Honoring the Sabbath Day in the way they prescribed along with keeping all of their other micromanaging rules represented their Process and Causehood. They forced others to obey their Process. When the members of their society did, it fed and nourished these false leaders. It was like worshipping them. They were masquerading as gods. They were saying that they kept these laws very well and in doing so, they demonstrated their value. And if others wanted to approach the same value, they needed to keep the laws as well as they did.
But initially, this must have begun with keeping the real laws of God, which at this time was the Law of Moses. When people make this a competition and they see that most people are keeping the laws of God, they up the stakes by complicating the law – making it even harder to obey. And when they show they can obey it, even at this higher level, they are gratified in their pride. When others follow them and strive to obey the higher law, it also gratifies their pride. But eventually, they will have to complicate it even more to continue setting themselves above others. This is an eternal evolution of this way of doing things. This is the result of Pride and Envy.
So for Jesus to attack these Pseudo Laws, was to attack their value. They were saying that goodness, righteousness, and value are dependent upon how exactly a person could obey these complicated laws. Jesus attacked this system by saying that attempting to follow these laws is superfluous, and that the motives behind this game are evil. He was saying that they are Pseudo Laws, not the laws of God. He was saying that their aim to keep these laws was blinding them to the real aim that God had for them.
The real aim is to develop compatible relationships of sustainable love and joy with God and with each other. The purpose of God’s laws are to assist us in this effort. Working to obey laws is not a game that we play to be better than others. The practice of figuring out how to do good is not to be motivated by pride—the end-all goal to be better than our neighbor, our spouse, our brother, our sister, our friend, our son, our daughter, our community. The practice of figuring out how to do good is to be motivated by love—the end-all goal to develop sustainable, compatible relationships with our neighbor, our spouse, our brother, our sister, our friend, our son, our daughter, our community.
To be able to sacrifice more than someone else should not contribute to a superiority complex. To have the ability to sacrifice more than someone else is an objective fact. It is neither an act of pride or righteousness to acknowledge that fact. It is objective – neuter. With any strength, knowledge, talent, ability, resource we have acquired or were born with, we choose what we will do with it. “With great power comes great responsibility.” “To whom much is given, much is required.” What we do with our resources, is what defines our Process as prideful or righteous. Do we use them to judge how much better we are than others? Or do we use them to serve others, knowing that we also need to rely on others to serve us with their resources since none of us have them all?
The Jewish leadership’s laws revolved around the Sabbath, the ceremonial washing of hands and dishes before eating, the use of their money, prayer, fasting, and their relationships with each other -marriage, family, community.
So why were the Pharisees, Herodians, Sadducees, lawyers, scribes, and other judges of Jesus’ day so upset about his and his disciples lack of keeping their law? Why couldn’t they live and let live?
I believe it was because they derived their value – their sense of worth – from the keeping of their laws and from the number of people in their community who kept their laws. They were dependent upon the number of people in their community to uphold their laws. Why? Because when you’re not keeping the real laws of God, you are not supported by his validation. God’s validation enables us to feel our value quietly and completely. We don’t have to rely on other people’s validation. So if someone else disagrees with us and our way of doing things and if the way we are striving to live our lives is in alignment with God’s will for us, we will be sustained in the face of this other person’s disagreement. We don’t have to worry about the opinions and judgements of others because we are not relying upon their validation.
This isn’t easy because we do rely upon each other for support. Ideally, our support of each other is in alignment with God’s support. But this isn’t always the case.
It is so tricky because we may be tempted to convince others who conflict with our opinion and our way of doing things that God is on our side. But this defeats the whole attempt to rely on God’s judgements. We don’t have to do any convincing for our own sake. (Don’t gotta say anything, don’t say a word at all…). Let other people have their own opinions. Let them judge us as righteous or evil. Let our focus be on God’s validation of how we are choosing to live our lives. And if we need to continue to learn, change, and grow, let it be before God and not before others who may say when we stumble, struggle, change, repent that, “We knew you were wrong all along.”
Disregard their judgments when it comes to validating our worth. But regard their judgments when it comes to figuring out how we can serve them better in our relationships with them. And if our hearts are pure, we will seek to know how God desires us to serve them. There are times when we need to be like Westley (Dread Pirate Roberts) from William Goldman’s “The Princess Bride” and say, “As you wish.” But there are also times when we need to be like Martin Luther and say, “This is where I stand” regardless of what you do that hurts me.
No comments:
Post a Comment