The more time I spend in religious communities (I have been part of many, in a variety of capacities), and the more I observe our culture (the Church in America and America in general), the more I feel that we are a nation of pharisees.
It seems that many of the issues that we struggle with today are the very same issues that Jesus was constantly challenging the pharisees about. There seems to be an incessant legalism abundant in our Christianity today, which stands in direct opposition to Jesus' words and example. Yet we can't help but continue to force a restrictive religion on those around us. We can't help but point fingers and name names, all the while citing biblical chapter and verse to justify our rantings, yet never truly 'getting' what Jesus was all about.
We force people into our pre-contextualized ideology of Christianity and reject them (in a wide variety of ways, some subtle and some blatant) for not fitting in to our notions of what a Christian should be. Isn't this exactly what Jesus told the Pharisees to stop doing?
Now, I'm not talking about issues of morality or ethics or behavior or rights and wrongs. Rather, I'm talking about our focus as Christians, and how we relate to one another and to the world around us. Our Aristotelian minds must group everyone and everything into some category of our own creation, and largely based on our own experiences and expectations. Rather than reaching out with the love and the grace of God...a love that can heal the pain of a world in need...we judge and dismiss, criticize and ostracize.
We rarely live up to the two major imperatives of Scripture: to love God and one another, and to go into all the world and share the good news of Jesus. I wonder if we are too busy trying to find ways that people are not living up to God's standards to bother with the fact that no one ever does. Isn't this what the Pharisees did? They focused on the law so much that they forgot to pay attention to what God was trying to do.
The amazing thing about God's grace is that it is unconditional love in action...it loves us despite our sin and worthlessness. Jesus' work on the cross was to make us worthy because we are not able to do so on our own. The unconditional love of God says, "you are NOT worthy, but that's why I sent Jesus...he was Love made flesh." Isn't that what the world needs?
How do we interact with the world around us? Do we act as agents and emissaries of the love of God, or do we act more like judge and jury, as the Pharisees did? I know I act more like the latter, sometimes. I wonder if, in many ways, we aren't a nation of pharisees.
I think I'll write a book about this some day.
