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Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Yeshua Excoriates Fellow Pharisees: "The Woe Passages"

Alan: The least frequently mentioned truth of The New Testament is that Pharisees thrive in every generation. 

Pharisees - and neo-Pharisees - represent the essential threat to merciful, love-centered Christianity.

Be they ancient or modern, Pharisees are chiefly concerned with punishment not forgiveness; condemnation not liberation.

In all three Abrahamic religions, devotees confront a fundamental choice between love-mercy-compassion-forgiveness and vengeance-vindictiveness-punishment-retaliation.
"There is no fear in love. 
But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. 
The one who fears is not made perfect in love." 
1 John 4:18

 In their Grinch-hearts (always "two sizes too small"), Pharisees are outraged at Yeshua's exhortation to "Love your enemies."

 They would rather see them damned.

Indeed, they delight in damnation.

"Love Your Enemies. Do Good To Those Who Hate You." 
Luke 6:27-42
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/02/love-your-enemies-do-good-to-those-who.html

"How The Grinch Stole Christmas"
https://soundcloud.com/alan-archibald

Matthew 23 - The Message 

Religious Fashion Shows

23 1-3 Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. “The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish veneer.
4-7 “Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’
8-10 “Don’t let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ.
11-12 “Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you’ll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you’re content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty.

Frauds!

13 “I’ve had it with you! You’re hopeless, you religion scholars, you Pharisees! Frauds! Your lives are roadblocks to God’s kingdom. You refuse to enter, and won’t let anyone else in either.
15 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You go halfway around the world to make a convert, but once you get him you make him into a replica of yourselves, double-damned.
16-22 “You’re hopeless! What arrogant stupidity! You say, ‘If someone makes a promise with his fingers crossed, that’s nothing; but if he swears with his hand on the Bible, that’s serious.’ What ignorance! Does the leather on the Bible carry more weight than the skin on your hands? And what about this piece of trivia: ‘If you shake hands on a promise, that’s nothing; but if you raise your hand that God is your witness, that’s serious’? What ridiculous hairsplitting! What difference does it make whether you shake hands or raise hands? A promise is a promise. What difference does it make if you make your promise inside or outside a house of worship? A promise is a promise. God is present, watching and holding you to account regardless.
23-24 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but on the meat of God’s Law, things like fairness and compassion and commitment—the absolute basics!—you carelessly take it or leave it. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required. Do you have any idea how silly you look, writing a life story that’s wrong from start to finish, nitpicking over commas and semicolons?
25-26 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You burnish the surface of your cups and bowls so they sparkle in the sun, while the insides are maggoty with your greed and gluttony. Stupid Pharisee! Scour the insides, and then the gleaming surface will mean something.
27-28 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You’re like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it’s all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you’re saints, but beneath the skin you’re total frauds.
29-32 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You build granite tombs for your prophets and marble monuments for your saints. And you say that if you had lived in the days of your ancestors, no blood would have been on your hands. You protest too much! You’re cut from the same cloth as those murderers, and daily add to the death count.
33-34 “Snakes! Reptilian sneaks! Do you think you can worm your way out of this? Never have to pay the piper? It’s on account of people like you that I send prophets and wise guides and scholars generation after generation—and generation after generation you treat them like dirt, greeting them with lynch mobs, hounding them with abuse.
35-36 “You can’t squirm out of this: Every drop of righteous blood ever spilled on this earth, beginning with the blood of that good man Abel right down to the blood of Zechariah, Barachiah’s son, whom you murdered at his prayers, is on your head. All this, I’m telling you, is coming down on you, on your generation.
37-39 “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Murderer of prophets! Killer of the ones who brought you God’s news! How often I’ve ached to embrace your children, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn’t let me. And now you’re so desolate, nothing but a ghost town. What is there left to say? Only this: I’m out of here soon. The next time you see me you’ll say, ‘Oh, God has blessed him! He’s come, bringing God’s rule!’”


Alan: Jesus' beliefs were so closely allied with those of the Pharisees that scholars consider him a "philosophical Pharisee."  

 However, when Yeshua contemplated his fellows, he was chiefly struck by the breach between "talking the talk" and "walking the walk."

 The fact that Pharisees "did not practice what they preached" evoked Jesus' full fury.

His philosophical bed-fellows were well-dressed church-goers, pillars of the community, who, "like whitewashed tombs that appear beautiful outwardly... inside are full of dead men’s bones and rot." Matthew 23:27

Jesus preferred the companionship of sinners to "the putatively righteous" and the urge to crucify him arose from the "unclean" company he kept.

 The ruling triumvirate of high priests, religious lawyers and Pharisees -- "the moneyed class" -- considered Jesus' behavior abominable. 
Everything Jesus And The Apostles Had To Say About "The Rich" And "The Poor"

For the Pharisees, Yeshua was a filthy, scandalous man -- a rabbi with a following! -- and they determined to purge him. 


Matthew 11:19 American Standard Version 

19 The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold, a gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners! And wisdom is justified by her works.

Luke 7:34 Common English Bible 

34  Yet the Human One [a] came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunk, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’

Footnote [a]  Luke 7:34 Or Son of Man


"Who Were The Tax Collectors And Shepherds In Jesus' Time"

How "the plank" got there.
(An inside job)

"Any Religion That Needs Fear To Thrive Is Bad Religion"

It Is Important To Know These Things So Religion Doesn't Do You More Harm Than Good

What Too Many Christians Get Wrong

Jesus: Festive Tippler And Friend Of Whores, Publicans, Tax Collectors And Sundry Sinners

James' Epistle: "Judgment Without Mercy Will Be Shown To Anyone Who Has Not Shown Mercy"



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