What? Me? A Pharisee?

When you read the Gospels, and you see Jesus in conflict with the Pharisees, what do you imagine they look like? I know I used to have an image of what I believed to be the archetypal Pharisee: an extremely old man who looked like most modern day orthodox rabbis like this picture. But the more I think about it, the more I think that this is a wrong assumption. I think there are a few reasons why I (and maybe a lot of other people) envisioned them this way:

1.  I confused the Pharisees with all the Jewish leaders. I imagined all the groups (chief priests, scribes, Saducees, and Sanheidren) were one large homogenous group. This isn't helped by John constantly just lumping all the Jewish opposition into one category (the Jews).
2.  It's easy to think of Jesus' enemies/opposition as someone who is nothing like me. This creates plenty of distance between those evil men who opposed our Lord and me, his humble servant.

As I have been reading the book of Luke of late, I've noticed something. My thoughts on who the Pharisees were is nothing but denial. If I can imagine them as being someone that is nothing like me, then it's easy for me to deny that I am anything like them. When Jesus talks against the Pharisees, it could be someone who is a lot like me. In fact, the actions and attitudes of the Pharisees in his stories are my attitudes. These were people who were involved in their religion, grew up studying the Bible, and tried to devote their whole lives to God the best they could. That sounds a lot like me.

The Pharisee Simon was appalled that Jesus was inviting a woman with a bad reputation to join their dinner. This along with the complaint of the Pharisees in Luke 15 concerning Jesus accepting sinners reflects the prejudices that I have had about who God can use.

The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in the temple praying exposes many of my self-righteous feelings, attitudes, and even prayers (Luke 18). 

It's far too easy to imagine we are one of the disciples hanging around with Jesus. Yes, they were buffoons. Yes, they were dense. Yes, they failed. But they were still on Jesus' side. They had his back (most of the time). And as Jesus said, "Whoever is not working against you, is working with you" (Luke 9:50, the Voice).

But too often, we are working against Jesus. Instead of imagining picturing myself as a disciple who's just bumbling through my ignorance, I need to challenge myself to imagine myself as the Pharisee who Jesus is warning to get my priorities straight. 

As a side note: think of Paul. Before he was converted, he was a Pharisee. Many estimate that he was born around A.D. 5, and the events of Acts 6 occurred around the year 34. This would mean he could have been twenty-nine when he had established his reputation as an elite Pharisee. He was younger than me! When I started thinking about that, it really changed my perspective of who the Pharisees were.

Lessons from Sick Kids

As a parent, nothing is harder for me than when one of my kids is sick. Today was one of those days when both of the kiddos had to go to the doctor because of a cough that started yesterday and just kept getting worse. The pediatrician told us that it was just a cold and to just keep doing Benadryl and add Delsym to help clear the mucus out.

Half an hour after Ella had taken the Delsym she was sitting in my lap and I looked down and she looked pretty rough. Her nose was running down her face and her eyes were watering down her chin. As we were putting her to bed she even had a little fever.

This got me thinking. While this made her look like she was getting worse, this was actually her on the road to getting better. Before we took her to the doctor, she looked fine, but she had a terrible cough. But in order for her to get better, we had to get all that junk out of her. It's pretty messy and maybe even more painful, but it's necessary. What is a fever, but your body trying to kill the sickness inside of you.

Isn't that the way life is? In order to get better, we must have the badness purged out of our lives. The Bible uses the symbol of a fire refining us, burning away all of the impurities (see Isa. 48:10; 1 Pet. 1:7; Rev. 3:18). Isn't just all part of dying to ourselves. In order to be resurrected into a new life, we must first die. In order to get better, we must find a way to drive all the junk out of our lives, like the snot, sweat and tears when you have a cold.

Thoughts on Trafficking, Slavery, and Euphemisms

A few days ago I was talking with a few coworkers, and something came up about human trafficking. Of course, the conversation usually get's pretty serious when that issue comes up. But at one point one of the girls, Amy, made a profound point. She observed, "I wonder if people would take it more seriously if we just called it what it is: slavery."

That got me thinking. Why do we bother to use euphemisms when we're talking about such serious topics? Why is it always "human trafficking" instead of what it is: slavery. 

What is a euphemism? According to Websters it's "a substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant."

Do we really need to ease into this topic? The reality of what it is, is unpleasant and offensive. If you ever hear the stories of what these slaves go through, you won't want to soften the blow. 

Just imagine what would happen if instead of asking a politician: "What do you plan to do to stop human trafficking?" Someone just came out and asked one: "How are we going to pull these poor children--little boys and girls--out of forced prostitution?"

I know that the prophets in the Old Testament had no qualms about calling it as they saw it. Ezekiel is one example. He would equate Israel's relationship to a marriage, and then tell Israel that they were lust-ridden whores. They didn't tone down their message because the children's choir was singing before they spoke.

When we constantly call it like it is, we cannot deny how serious the issue is. I can gloss over reading about human trafficking, because that could just be moving people from place to place illegally. I think of drug trafficking or something like that. But when we talk about sex slavery (and other forms of slavery) as they really are, we cannot deny what it does. It turns people(someone's sons and daughters) into commodities. And many times they are commodities who are used for someone else's perversion.

Find an organization that is trying to fight this terror of modern-day slavery. Like the International Justice Mission. We support a local nonprofit called OneLess that is doing some great things both locally here in Nashville, and around the world.

Remember, it isn't just happening across the world. While the movie Taken does a good job of showing that sex slavery does exist, it falls short in that it occurs across the world in Europe and the Middle East. The horrific truth is that it happens here in the U.S.; and most of the clientele are homegrown American citizens.

We Inspire the World

Last week I led our weekly company chapel. The message was kind of long for one post, but here is the first half of what I spoke about. I'll post the next point soon.

At Thomas Nelson, our mission statement is "We inspire the world." Recently, I've been thinking about that motto and what that means. How do we accomplish this?

First, we inspire the world by delivering the written word. Nothing changes the world like the transmission of ideas, and the written word is the most effective way to do that. One of my favorite books, Fahrenheit 451, is about a distopian society that bans books. There are fire squads that go around and burn books whenever they find them.

Captain Beatty, one of the firemen is a zealot for their cause. He used to read books, but now agrees with their mandate do destroy them because  be believes that there is nothing more disagreeable and dangerous as a book. He says that books are more dangerous than a loaded gun. This is very true. Not only does reading tell us things about ourselves that we don't want to know, reading gives ideas a way to take root inside of us and change us to the core and prompt us to change. Books can also be a catalyst to change the world.

This can happen for both good change and bad. Beatty was right to describe them as dangerous. Some ways that the written word has changed the world for good are:

• Martin Luther King Jr. found inspiration from Gandhi and Henry David Thoreau to develop his methods of nonviolent resistance. Furthermore King's Letter from Birmingham Jail got the white church leaders involved in the movement.
• Martin Luther's eyes were opened when he studied the writings of St. Augustine and the Apostle Paul. And what would have become of the Protestant Reformation if it weren't for Gutenberg's invention of the printing press?

Unfortunately bad things have happened throughout history because of the written word:

• When Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin read the philosophy of  Marx and Engels and came up with a vision of a utopian society and sparked a revolution.
• Hitler's reading of Nietzsche and his interpretation of Wagner's works prompted him to become the leader that he felt Germany needed. Additionally the Nazi's used propaganda to spread their message with very little resistance.

So it is clear that the transmission of ideas is a powerful and dangerous business. And the written word is historically the most effective way to transmit ideas.