Jesus and Religious Bureaucracy

If one reads the Gospels without the piety template and then thinks about what is read, one comes to some interesting and unexpected conclusions. Jesus was human. He had human emotions. One of these emotions that Jesus had was anger. Yes, anger is a legitimate emotion for the Christian.

In the Gospels Jesus got mad at two categories of people. The first of these was the religious hypocritical bureaucracy. (I will talk about the second category Monday.)

Mark 3 tells us of one healing.

And he entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there who had his hand withered. 2 And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day; that they might accuse him. 3 And he saith unto the man that had his hand withered, Stand forth. 4 And he saith unto them, Is it lawful on the sabbath day to do good, or to do harm? to save a life, or to kill? But they held their peace. 5 And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved at the hardening of their heart, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thy hand. And he stretched it forth; and his hand was restored. 6 And the Pharisees went out, and straightway with the Herodians took counsel against him, how they might destroy him.

As is usual with Mark, a more human picture of Jesus is painted than in the other Gospel narratives of this incident, in Luke 6 and Matthew 12. Luke adds that this healing drove the Pharisees to "madness."

This incident shows us a common feature of bureaucracy. The rules become supreme over the people the rules are supposed to guide and help. It is difficult to take principles and make them into rules. But this is what a bureaucracy has to do to function. There is another surprise when you read the Gospels. Jesus did want, through us, to build a church, but it was not a church with a centralized bureaucracy.

I think that the principle of dedicating one day a week to get closer to God is an eternal principle. Only when religious bureaucracy gets involved does the principle become corrupted.

Religious bureaucracy makes Jesus angry. I suggest you avoid it.

Gethsemane

Since I will be talking about the humanity of Jesus tomorrow, I thought this song was a good way to begin thinking about this subject. Here is a music representation of Jesus at his most human moment–in the garden before his arrest. 

Proof Texting

There are several reasons why the Bible seems at times to contradict itself. The most common is when we take a general rule and try to apply it to every situation. It cannot be done. We humans are too varied in our personal situations. Sometimes even a small difference in the exact situations can lead to a different outcome. This is why American case law is so huge. There are millions of people and individual situations can be odd.

There was one case I remember in my very brief “introduction to law” course many years ago. A truck had just had a tire replaced. The truck was going down the road when it swerved to avoid a jaywalker. The truck hit a curb and the wheel flew off, going through a window at a shop. A woman inside had a miscarriage. Who was responsible?

Think of the possibilities. Was the tire defective? Did the worker at the tire shop make a mistake? Was the driver inattentive? The jay walker certainly has a measure of blame. This is what juries do: they assess blame. No written law can answer every contingency.

The infamous phrase "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth" is actually discussing this aspect of the law. It means, at least according to the Jewish sages that interpreted it in the Talmud, that in a legal case the details of what happened, what the damage was, and so on, should be taken into account when determining damages. In Hammurabi's law, from about the same time period as Old Testament law, the social standing of the victim was a determining factor in the monetary penalty. This was not to be allowed in Israel.

Of course this enigmatic phrase was lifted out of context to justify revenge, the exact opposite of what the law intended. Jesus mentioned this false interpretation of the law in Matthew 5.

While there are various anomalies in the Bible, I have found that most of them are statements that are valid in the context in which they are used in the Bible, but not valid outside of that context.
Then these out-of-context verses are strung together to form a doctrine.

I suggest that those who treat the Bible this way follow the advice in these three verses.

And he went away and hanged himself. Matt 27:5

Go, and do thou likewise.Luke 10:37

That thou doest, do quickly. John 13:27

Do not delay! Obey the Bible.

Or maybe, just maybe, work a little harder when interpreting the Bible.

Come Out Of Her My People

I have been saying you need to leave Babylon. Today Ted Pearce says it musically for me. 

Telephone Game

I remember the first time I played the telephone game. It was in the fifth grade. The beginning statement was from an ad our teacher had found. It said, "Go on a trip with Bill and Betty." I was one of the ones that changed it as it made its way across the room. I heard it wrong. It became, "Bill and Betty went on a trip." It continued on until everyone started laughing as they heard it. It had changed again. Then the final person went in front of the class and said "Bill and Betty went on a trip and kissed." He turned very red as he said it. Care to guess what his name was? Yes, there was a Betty in the class! 

As Abraham Lincoln once said, "There are a lot of fake quotes on the Internet." As the election season progresses we will see a lot of emails about the various candidates. It has already started. Obama is not too popular in certain circles. You may have noticed. I do not like him myself, but that is not the point. If you repeat a story about someone and it turns out to be untrue you have sinned. Yes, sinned. 

In the last presidential election I received a forwarded email from a friend, who alas has gradually become an acquaintance over issues like this. I forget exactly what the email said, but as soon as I read it I doubted it. I did some very simple research on Google. The email that he had forwarded about Obama was untrue. You’d think that he would have been grateful to have this pointed out so he could avoid this error in the future. I was wrong. His attitude was that while this story was untrue, others similar to it were true so it did not matter. 

To be frank, there are scriptures that indicate this is not wise. 

James 3 tells us:

Don't be in any rush to become a teacher, my friends. Teaching is highly responsible work. Teachers are held to the strictest standards. And none of us is perfectly qualified. We get it wrong nearly every time we open our mouths. If you could find someone whose speech was perfectly true, you'd have a perfect person, in perfect control of life. A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse. A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything—or destroy it! ...

Moses tells us the same in Ex 21:1-3

"Don't pass on malicious gossip. "Don't link up with a wicked person and give corrupt testimony. Don't go along with the crowd in doing evil and don't fudge your testimony in a case just to please the crowd. And just because someone is poor, don't show favoritism in a dispute.

Or maybe this from Eph 5:3-4

Don't allow love to turn into lust, setting off a downhill slide into sexual promiscuity, filthy practices, or bullying greed. Though some tongues just love the taste of gossip, those who follow Jesus have better uses for language than that. Don't talk dirty or silly. That kind of talk doesn't fit our style. Thanksgiving is our dialect.

I know this may be overkill in terms of scriptures, but this is a crucial issue. Gossip is often mentioned in the Bible. Click here for some more examples. 

If you are going to forward an email, or share on Facebook, a little research might be in order. 

Of course we can trust Weird Al, so his advice in this this video is completely true.