The Good Shepherd Story.

John 10.11-21.

In the previous bit, Jesus says he’s the sheepfold gate. In this bit, Jesus says he’s the good shepherd.

These passages don’t confuse a lot of people, because most of us have plenty enough brainpower to keep up with the idea of Jesus switching metaphors. “I’m the gate; you don’t go in around me. And I’m the shepherd—a good shepherd, who defends his sheep, unlike people who only start up a church for the power and money and fame, and the instant things get serious or rough, they bail on their church in Seattle, Washington and move to Scottsdale, Arizona, and con another flock into following them.”

…Okay yeah, I’m sounding a tad specific there, like I have a particular guy in mind. Maybe I do. But you could swap in any two cities in the United States—or the planet—and you’ll probably find a bad shepherd fleeing from town to town, hoping to evade accountability so he can get away with yet more evil. There have been bad shepherds throughout history. The people of Jesus’s day no doubt knew a few; maybe some rabbi who stole all his synagogue’s money, or one who slept around, or one who touched the children. Human nature doesn’t change, and ravenous wolves still try to feast on the faithful. So these things still happen.

But Jesus is the good shepherd. Kinda like the LORD is in Psalm 23… and since Jesus is the LORD, it’s totally okay to apply that psalm to him. But let’s deal with today’s passage first.

John 10.11-21 KWL

11 “I’m the good shepherd.

The good shepherd puts down his soul for the sheep.

12 The hireling, being no shepherd—

who isn’t the sheep’s own shepherd—

he sees the wolf coming,

and he abandons the sheep and flees.

The wolf snatches and scatters them.

13 Because he’s a hireling!

He doesn’t care about anything about the sheep.

 

14 “I’m the good shepherd.

I know who’s mine,

and who’s mine know me.

15 Just as the Father knows me,

and I know the Father.

16 I have other sheep,

which aren’t from this sheepfold.

It’s necessary for me to lead them as well:

They’ll hear my voice,

and they’ll become one flock, one shepherd.

 

17 “This is why the Father loves me:

I put down my soul,

so I can pick it up again.

18 No one takes it away from me;

instead I put it down by myself.

I have the power to put it down,

and I have the power to pick it up again.

I receive this command from my Father.”

 

19 Again, there became a split among the Judeans

about these words.

20 Many were saying about him, “He has a demon,”

and “He’s raving mad; do you hear him?”

21 Others were saying, “These sayings aren’t demonic;

a demon isn’t able to open blind eyes!”

Jesus says a lot of profound things here, and of course the Judeans’ response was to either say, “Well of course he’s the good shepherd,” or if you’re a bit more closed-minded, “Oh he’s just babbling complete nonsense. Who does he think he is, God or something?”

As you might remember, parables tend to go right over the heads of the closed-minded—not necessarily because they can’t follow what Jesus means by them, but because they have no faith in Jesus. They might totally agree with the metaphor of Jesus’s followers being sheep—but they’re gonna dismiss and ignore the rest. It’s childish rubbish, meant for weak-minded sheeple.

“By faith alone.”

SOLA FIDE 'soʊ.lə 'fi.deɪ noun. Short for the Latin iustificatio sola fide jus.ti.fi'kat.jo 'so.la 'fi.de, “justification by faith alone”: The Protestant doctrine that our right standing before God depends only on the basis of our trust in him.

2. The popular Evangelical belief that salvation is solely achieved through orthodox Christian belief (i.e. faith).

Yeah, I listed two definitions of sola fide above. One’s right; one’s wrong.

One’s taught in seminaries, and debated by Protestants and Roman Catholics, ’cause Catholics insist justification is a little more detailed than that. They would argue it has to include God’s grace, and our faith-response has to produce good fruit. I don’t disagree! But they’re just going into greater detail about what justification means, whereas the Protestant Reformers simply put the complex idea into very basic words. God’s looking for people to trust him. When we do, he justifies us. We now have a connection to him, a relationship with him; we must abide in him, and he will abide in us. Jn 15.4 And fruit will grow, and we’ll inherit his kingdom.

The other is all over popular Christian culture, and is taught in way too many churches by people who never bothered to learn sola fide is short for iustificatio sola fide. They don’t know “by faith alone” refers to justification. Or they do, but they just presume justification and salvation are the same thing—if God considers us right with him, doesn’t this automatically make us saved?

Plus they’ve defined faith wrong. When they say faith, they don’t mean “trust in God.” They mean religion. They mean orthodox Christian beliefs; the faith of the first Christians, the faith of the ancient church, the faith of our fathers, the creeds, the church’s faith statement, the right stuff to believe. To them, sola fide means we believe that—and once we believe all the right things, we’re saved!

(And conversely, they also believe if we don’t believe the right things, we’re not saved.)

In short, to them sola fide means “saved by the Christian faith alone.” Saved by orthodoxy. I call it “faith righteousness.” Thing is, it’s not at all what the scriptures teach. We’re not saved by the good work of making sure we embrace all the proper Christian doctrines—because that’d mean we’re saved by good works. And the gospel doesn’t teach we’re saved by karma, but grace.

Justification: How God considers us right with him.

JUSTIFY 'dʒəs.tə.faɪ verb. Show or prove to be correct.

2. Make morally right [with God].

[Justification dʒəs.tə.fə'keɪ.ʃən noun, justificatory dʒə.stə'fɪk.ə.tɔ.ri adjective.]

In our culture “justify” usually means we have an excuse for what we did. Not necessarily a good one.

Fr’instance, let’s say I took someone behind the church building and beat the daylights out of them. Ordinarily and rightly, that’d get me tossed into jail for battery. When I stand before the judge I’d better have a really solid reason for my actions. “He started it; I just finished it” sounds like a good enough explanation for most people, but legally it’s not gonna work: Outside of movies, the law doesn’t give free passes to badasses. Neither do juries. They still send plenty of these badasses to prison.

Nope; justification means I need a profound reason for why I shouldn’t be jailed or institutionalized for my behavior. One that’s either in accordance with the law (“I reasonably feared for my life if I didn’t”) or is good enough to make judges and juries actually set aside the law, declare me not guilty, and set me free.

Now when it comes to sin, I am so guilty. I have no good excuse. Neither do you. Neither does anyone.

Yeah, we all have accidental, unintentional, or omissive sins in our past. But we have way more sins which we fully, thoughtfully, deliberately meant to do. We weren’t out of our right minds; we weren’t backed into tragic moral choices; we weren’t predetermined by God to sin in order to fulfill some secret evil plan of his. We have no excuse. There’s no justification for our behavior. We’re totally guilty.

Yet God forgives us anyway, adopts us as his kids, and lets us inherit his kingdom.

Why? Why does God let us off the hook?

Well, various theologians are gonna pitch all sorts of theories as to how ritual sacrifice and Jesus’s death might actually plaster over those sins in a meaningful way. But while that’s awesome and impressive and all that, that answers how, not why. Why’d Jesus bother to apply this plaster in the first place? Why does God even bother to have a relationship with humanity and Christians, despite our obvious unworthiness?

It’s a really simple explanation: God is love, and God is gracious. He loves us too much to not find some way to restore our relationship with him. So Jesus died to totally, absolutely wipe out the sins of the whole world. 1Jn 2.2 Anybody can have a relationship with God! Our sinfulness is no barrier whatsoever. We might imagine it is, ’cause we prefer karma, in which we merit that relationship instead of getting a free pass from God. But we needn’t waste our efforts—as if we ever could wipe out our own sins. Jesus already took care of that. Sin is defeated. We don’t need to do anything more. We’re forgiven.

So if everyone’s forgiven, why are some people saved, and some people aren’t, even though God wants to save everyone? 1Ti 2.4 Why does God have relationships with some individuals and not others, even though he loves the world? Jn 3.16 Why doesn’t God just drag everyone to heaven, no matter how they kick and scream?

Well it’s not, as Calvinists insist, because God doesn’t wanna save everyone, doesn’t really love everybody, and limits his forgiveness to a select few. It’s because God figures only one thing justifies his having a relationship with us: Whether we’re gonna respond, in any way, to such a relationship. Whether we’re gonna love him back.

The apostles distilled this idea to one word: Faith. I mean, people respond to God in all sorts of ways. Pagans pick and choose what they wanna believe God’s like—and as a result they basically invent their own fictitious “God,” and sometimes then don’t even follow him. Nontheists don’t even try. But if we do try—if we trust God to love us, forgive our screw-ups, make up for our deficiencies with Christ, 1Jn 2.1-3 work with us, guide us, and glorify us Ro 8.30 —and y’know, God’ll accept faith in the tiniest of servings Lk 17.6 —we’re good. It justifies God’s interactivity in our lives: It won’t be time wasted! It’ll lead to our salvation.

So God made faith a condition of our relationship with him. No faith, no relationship. No relationship, no kingdom. Mt 7.22-23 Kinda important.

When the heavens are brass?

Deuteronomy 28.23.

Depending on whether a Christian grew up with the King James Version or the New International Version, we’re sometimes gonna talk about how sometimes “the heavens are brass,” or “the heavens are bronze.” No we don’t mean the sky’s looking kinda gold or yellowish, like a nice sunset or a looming dust cloud. We’re talking about when we talk to God… and we feel like we’re getting back nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Deuteronomy 28.23 KJV

And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.

But the actual context of this verse isn’t even about prayer. It’s part of a curse Moses spelled out for the Hebrews who were about to enter their promised land: If you dismiss what the LORD tells you, and do evil instead, he’s gonna withdraw his blessings and things are gonna suck. Hard.

Deuteronomy 28.20-24 NLT

20 “The LORD himself will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for doing evil and abandoning me. 21 The LORD will afflict you with diseases until none of you are left in the land you are about to enter and occupy. 22 The LORD will strike you with wasting diseases, fever, and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew. These disasters will pursue you until you die. 23 The skies above will be as unyielding as bronze, and the earth beneath will be as hard as iron. 24 The LORD will change the rain that falls on your land into powder, and dust will pour down from the sky until you are destroyed.”

Sound familiar? Pandemics, climate change and freaky weather, massive drought? No? Well, this was a warning to Hebrews not Americans. But it wouldn’t hurt to shape up a little.

Anyway when Moses spoke of the “skies above will be as unyielding as bronze,” he meant a sky which produces no rain. In his day, the ancients believed the sky, or firmament, was a solid wall holding back the waters of heaven—but it was porous, so occasionally rain would get through. Well, a bronze shield isn’t porous… unless your opponents have iron arrowheads. But if you were hoping to dig wells in the ground, and get water thataway, guess what that’s gonna be like. Yep, iron.

So yeah, whenever you talk about not hearing back from God, do not make the mistake of saying, “Like when the bible says about heavens like brass.” The bible does refer to that, but it’s about literal drought, not a spiritual one.

Now if you wanna talk about unanswered prayer, the bible does actually have passages on the topic. Quote them. Not the “heavens are brass” part; this ain’t one of them. Capice?

The Sheepfold Gate Story.

John 10.1-10.

A lot of reference materials claim Jesus only shares parables in the synoptic gospels, and that there are no parables in the gospel of John. Seriously, a lot of them. I grew up hearing it all my life. And it turns out it’s rubbish, because John straight-up states,

John 10.6 KJV

This parable spake Jesus unto them: but they understood not what things they were which he spake unto them.

It’s not a mistranslation either. True, John didn’t use the word παραβολή/paravolí, the word from which we literally get our word “parable.” He used παροιμίαν/parimían, which literally means “nearly like it.” But that’s what a parable is: It’s an analogy. A comparison. Something which is nearly like something else, so you can slip people some wisdom in a memorable format.

Other bibles have rendered parimían as “figure of speech” (ESV, NASB, NIV, NRSV) or “illustration” (NKJV, NLT). But again: Parables are figures of speech and illustrations. This is a parable. I suspect the translators were hesitant to use “parable” because it’s so widely believed and taught that John contains no parables. I still call rubbish. This is obviously a parable, and you gotta go through some weird logical gymnastics in order to claim it’s not.

It comes up in John 10, right after Jesus cured a blind man in John 9—whereupon the local Pharisees put the newly-cured guy on trial for heresy and excommunicate him. Jesus calls ’em blind. That’s a figure of speech; this next bit is a parable.

John 10.1-10 KWL

1 “Amen amen! I promise you,

one who won’t enter through the sheepfold gate,

but goes over it some other way:

That one is a thief, a looter.

2 One who enters through the gate is the sheep’s shepherd.

3 The gatekeeper opens up for this shepherd.

The sheep hear the shepherd’s voice.

He calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out.

4 Whenever the shepherd drives out his own sheep,

they go in front of him, and the sheep follow him,

because they’ve known his voice.

5 The sheep won’t follow a stranger,

but will flee from him:

They’ve not known the stranger’s voice.”

 

6 Jesus tells them this parable,

and they don’t know what he’s telling them,

7 so again Jesus says, “Amen amen! I promise you,

I’m the sheepfold gate.

8 Everybody who goes over me is a thief and looter.

But the sheep don’t heed them.

9 I’m the gate. When anyone goes through me, they’ll be saved.

They’ll enter and exit, and they’ll find pasture.

10 A thief won’t come in—

unless it’s to steal, murder, and destroy.

I come so they might have life,

and might have superabundance.”

So. At the end of chapter 9 he was speaking of blindness; now he speaks of sheep? But it’s not a total non-sequitur. Blind or not, people oughta be able to identify their master by voice. The sheep don’t need to identify their shepherd by sight: They can hear. And strangers aren’t gonna sound right.

And yeah, Jesus is also the shepherd, and a good shepherd. But that’s actually another analogy, in the next few verses. We’ll get to it; it’s another of the parables in John. Yep, there are a few of ’em. I’ll get to them all. Meanwhile, in today’s passage, Jesus is the sheepfold gate.

When Christian leaders become control freaks.

Some years ago I read an article, written to Christian leaders, about how to make sure your small groups don’t go heretic. I guess that was a big concern for the author.

I don’t know how valid a concern it is; when you put people in charge of a small group, shouldn’t you have pre-screened ’em to make sure they’re not heretics? But then again, when we’re talking about the H-word, you do realize there are a number of Christians who are really loose with that definition: They think every error we make about the bible and Christian doctrine is heresy. And, yes, they actually wanna police every error.

This is why you’re sometimes gonna find a church with no small groups at all. Or a few—but every single group is either led by the head pastor, or must have the head pastor in attendance. It’s not that the church doesn’t want (or need!) small groups; it’s that Pastor must be there to directly supervise, because “the shepherd’s job is to protect the flock.”

Yep, it means Pastor’s a control freak.

And there are a lot of churches run by control freaks. Because they don’t believe it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to lead us to truth; Jn 16.13 they’re pretty sure it’s the pastor’s job. They might acknowledge it’s the Spirit’s job… but either the pastor’s pretty sure only he knows how to hear the Spirit correctly, or he doesn’t actually know the Holy Spirit ’cause he thinks the age of miracles is over. So either he, or his wife, or some very trusted lieutenant, has to be at your small group meeting. As your “covering.” Just to make sure.

Yeah, this behavior is far more fearful and cultlike than Spirit-led.

Two of the Spirit’s fruits are gonna be fearlessness—you’re not gonna worry about every little thing, ’cause you trust God to have your back—and self-control. Not pastor-control, self-control. The Spirit’s trying to develop our ability to govern ourselves. When others won’t let us do that, and insist they gotta wield the reins because no one else can do it properly, it doesn’t help the Spirit any!

Control-freak behavior is a character flaw, and if your entire church leadership is structured in such a way that the pastor controls absolutely everything, it means your pastor is deficient in self-control, grace, patience, and often love: They’re too afraid of what may happen, to love the people they gotta serve. You may realize these character defects disqualify people from leadership; you might also notice these defective pastors are pretty good at concealing this fact, or changing the subject (or even the definitions) whenever it comes up.

So if you’re part of a church like this, what can you do about it? Sadly not much. Control-freak leaders rarely listen. So yeah, you’re gonna have to start looking for a better church, whose pastor trusts the Spirit to handle the reins. And the whip.

Cults: When churches go very, very wrong.

CULT kəlt noun. A religion centered on one particular individual or figurehead.

2. A group (usually small) whose religious beliefs and practices are outside the norm: Too controling, abusive, devilish, or just plain strange.

3. A misplaced devotion to a particular person or thing.

4. A heretic Christian church.

[Cultic 'kəl.tɪk adjective, cultish 'kəl.tɪʃ adjective, cultism 'kəl.tiz.əm noun.]

I throw this word “cult” around a lot, so I’d better define it. First, what other folks mean by “cult,” all of which are included in the above definition:

• Sociologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists whose job descriptions end in -ist, tend to use definition #1: A cult is any religion with a guru in charge. Not necessarily controling, abusive, or devilish; just a group which follows a person. Technically Christianity falls under this definition: We follow Jesus, right?
• Popular culture leans towards definition #2: A cult is any creepy religion. If it weirds people out in any way, they just call it a cult. Even if it’s Christianity. If we trust Jesus a little too much for their comfort, they call us cultish.
• And popular Christian culture leans towards definition #4: A cult is any heretic church.

The popular Christian definition originated when Charles S. Braden used it, in his 1949 book These Also Believe: A Study of Modern American Cults and Minority Religious Movements to mean

any religious group which differs significantly in one or more respects as to belief or practice from those religious groups which are regarded as the normative expressions of religion in our total culture. Braden xii

And that’s the definition Walter R. Martin went with in his popular book The Kingdom of the Cults. It’s a book I oughta plug, since it’s mighty useful: It explains how certain churches deviate from orthodox Christianity.

But thanks to these guys, when an Evangelical Christian says “cult,” they typically mean “heretic.”

• Jehovah’s Witnesses and Oneness Pentecostals don’t believe God’s a trinity. So they’d be cults.
• Latter-Day Saints say Jesus (and for that matter the Father) is a created being. So, cult.
• Christian Scientists claim death is an illusion, and therefore Jesus didn’t literally die: Cult.
• Muslims and Buddhists don’t even believe Jesus is God: Cults.

Yep, doesn’t even matter if these groups don’t consider themselves Christian. Evangelicals will freely slap that label “cult” on any religion they consider heretic. Depending on how Fundamentalist they get—by which I mean how narrowly they define orthodoxy—everything can be a cult but their group. I grew up in such churches: If they strongly believe women shouldn’t wear makeup, yet your church lets ’em, they’ll call you a cult. Because their religion is so strict, makeup is orthodoxy, and you aren’t orthodox. Today it’s foundation, eyeshadow, blush, and lipstick; tomorrow you’re denouncing God and kissing Satan with tongue.

Of course if your church is that strict and controling, the cult is sorta on the other foot. (If you don’t mind me mixing a few metaphors there.)

Those who no longer think prayer works.

There’s a blog I follow. A few years ago, its author wrote a post about how he no longer believes prayer works—at least not the way we imagine it does.

He no longer believes prayer involves asking God for stuff. Nor asking questions of him, and getting answers. Nor calling on him for help. Forget about God meeting our needs and granting our wishes. Forget about asking this mountain to move over there, and it will.

Prayer, he states, is only about empathy. We pray for others because we love and care about them. It brings us closer to them. It expresses our love for them. It expresses our love for God too. It’s kind.

But otherwise prayer doesn’t do jack. And y’know, he says he’s okay with that.

I’ll take his word for it that he’s okay with that. But man alive, I sure wouldn’t be.

Back in my early twenties, I told God he needed to either do something, or I was gonna quit being Christian. Because I was tired of following a God who, according to my bible, does stuff… yet going to a church where, according to them, he doesn’t do stuff. They were cessationist, and believed God no longer answers prayer. Not for miracles, anyway.

Now, fortunate coincidences: He’d do those, from time to time. If a friend of yours had cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy and you prayed real hard and the tumor shrank, they felt it was wholly legitimate to give God the credit… for permitting the chemo to work, I suppose. Or say a different friend got into a road accident, and a dozen friends coincidentally happened to be on the scene, and helped rescue her, call an ambulance, call the auto insurance company, call a tow truck—why, such coincidences have to be a “God-incidence,” as Christians I know tend to call it. Such things don’t just happen.

But that’s as far as they’d permit God to act. Anything more than that—like actually getting cured of cancer only minutes before the chemotherapy—and they’d doubt the person even had cancer to begin with. Any incident where God told a person in advance, “Hey, be at this intersection; I need to you help somebody; you’ll see it when you get there,” and they’d claim, “Well that can’t be God, ’cause he doesn’t do such things. But Satan does.” According to their worldview, God’s powerless—and Satan’s not. Seriously.

I’m not claiming this blogger is this kind of cessationist. I’m pretty sure he’s not; I suspect if you asked him about Satan, he’d say the devil’s more of a malevolent human attitude than a literal being. But he has determined God doesn’t answer prayer, doesn’t cure the sick, doesn’t act. So, same as the cessationists I grew up with, he thinks prayer’s only about training us to pursue God’s will. Not teaching us to depend on him. We can’t. He’s sitting things out. He’s abandoned us to our fates. Bye kids; see you in heaven!

You can probably tell I disagree with him. A lot.

And no, not because I’d like to imagine God as caring and interactive. It’s because he answered my twentysomething prayer: He did something. Still does. He answers my prayers. Therefore I see no reason he can’t answer yours.

Deconstruction, and the Christians who do it.

DECONSTRUCT 'di.kən'strəkt verb [with object]. Take apart; unbuild.

2. Analyze a concept, belief system, or text, by taking it apart—usually to expose its hidden workings and assumptions, often to undermine its apparent soundness, significance, truth, or unity.

3. Reduce to its constituent parts, in order to reinterpret it.

[Deconstruction 'di.kən'strək.ʃən noun, deconstructionism 'di.kən'strək.ʃən.ɪz.əm noun, deconstructionist 'di.k(ə)n'strək.ʃ(ə)n.əst noun.]

The term “deconstruction” came from 20th century philosopher Jacques Derrida—who usually gets credit for the whole idea. But the idea doesn’t come from Derrida; just the word. The idea goes all the way back—to the beginning of western philosophy. All the way back to Socrates of Athens. Yep, the founder of western philosophy himself.

See, whenever an Athenian would state something which he was entirely sure was true, Socrates would respond, “Is that really true?” and start asking questions. Piercing questions. Analytical questions. He’d pick that idea apart. Yep, he’d deconstruct it. Taught his students to do likewise. The Socratic method has been practiced ever since, ’cause people realize how utterly valuable it is. The only people who think it’s not valuable, are the people who were awfully fond of their ideas, and absolutely hate to discover there’s no substance to them. Socrates managed to enrage so many of those people, they got him banned from Athens—that or drink poision, and because he never wanted to leave Athens, he chose the poison.

When Derrida first wrote of deconstruction—in his 1967 book De la Grammatologie (English, On Grammatology)—he was writing about words and their meaning. How they only have meaning in context: Whenever we use a word, it might have a dozen definitions in the dictionary, but it only means the one thing the speaker or author intends it to mean, and we figure out that meaning through where and how it was said or written. Further, the word’s meaning is only significant because it’s the opposite of something else: We say “up” because we don’t mean “some direction other than up”; we say “yes” because we certainly don’t mean “no.” Deconstruction analyzes all these things about language, and helps us better understand what it really means.

Same as postmodernism, a term which was originally just about art, people jumped all over deconstructionism, and decided to apply it to everything. Everything. You can deconstruct a piece of literature… but you can also deconstruct the law, and try to understand why laws are really made. Or history, and try to understand why we really tell the stories we do, with the spins we put on ’em. Or politics, and what politicians and their sponsors are really after. Or belief systems, ethical systems, philosophies, worldviews, and religions.

Or Christianity. Which is why I bring up the subject on TXAB; I’m not just jabbering about it ’cause I think it’s a neat idea. There are people who grew up Christian, who realized at some point, “Do I actually believe this stuff?” and are deconstructing it. No, not tearing it down, like deconstruction’s critics often complain: Taking it apart to understand it better. I did that, back in my twenties. I still do it from time to time. I find it profoundly helpful.

But yeah, often people are trying to tear it down. Taking it apart so they can nitpick it to death. Much like you take apart a bomb so it won’t go off, these people either don’t like Christians or Christianity, or think Christianity is something harmful or dangerous. They’re hoping if they do a little deconstruction on it, they’ll prove it false, and it’ll stop working. Or collapse like a house of cards.

There are a lot of Christians who object to deconstruction—same as they object to postmodernism, same as they object to any idea they don’t wholly understand. (Critical race theory, for example.) In my experience, they object because they don’t really have faith in the institutions getting analyzed. They fear, deep down, these things won’t withstand scrutiny. Deconstructionists might actually find something that makes ’em fall apart—so they’re nervous. Even terrified.

Sometimes for good reason! Some of those things don’t hold up to scrutiny. Like racism, sexism, nationalism, militarism, partisanship, violence, fear-based reactionism, or any of the other Christianist practices and idols which people have swapped out for the living God and true religion. Deep down they know their “faith” is in fact hypocrisy, and deconstruction threatens to shed light upon the deep darkness in which they dwell, Jn 3.20 and call ’em out.

To my mind, Christianity at its very core is Christ Jesus, his teachings, and the gospel. All the other stuff we’ve piled on top of that? Meh; my faith’s in Jesus, not them. I trust him, not that. So feel free to take ’em apart. Jesus can always hold up to scrutiny.

The Pharisee and Taxman Story.

Luke 18.9-14.

Immediately after the Persistent Widow Story, Jesus tells this one. It likewise touches upon prayer… but it’s more about people who consider themselves devout, yet are jerks.

Luke 18.9-14 KWL

9 Jesus also says to certain hearers

who trust in themselves that they’re righteous

—and despise everyone else—this parable:

10 “Two people go up to temple to pray.

One’s a Pharisee, and the other a taxman.

11 The Pharisee, standing off by himself, is praying this:

‘God, thank you that I’m not like every other person!

—those greedy, unjust fornicators!

Or even like this taxman!

12 I fast twice a week.

I tithe whatever I get.’

13 The taxman, who’d been standing way back,

didn’t even want to raise his eyes to heaven,

but beat his chest, saying,

‘God have mercy on me, a sinner.’

14 I tell you this taxman comes down from temple,

made righteous in his house, along with the other man.

For everyone who raises themselves will be lowered.

And those who lower themselves will be raised.”

Sometimes this is called the Pharisee and Publican story, ’cause “publican” is how the KJV translates τελώνης/telónis, “collector of tolls, customs, or taxes.” But “publican” is an anachronism at this point in history. Yep, it’s history lesson time, kids. Gather round and I’ll tell a story.

Before the Caesars took over, Rome was a republic. Not a democracy; it had democratic parts to it, but it was mostly an oligarchy run by patricians, the Roman nobility. At some uncertain point in their past, the patricians overthrew their king and ran Rome collectively. Every year, patricians elected two consuls to run things; the consuls picked senators, and these senators ruled for life. But senators weren’t permitted to collect taxes, so they hired lower-rank patricians to do it for ’em. These tax-gatherers were from the publicani rank, and over time, publicani became synonymous with taxmen.

The publicans practiced tax farming: Different companies applied for the job of collecting taxes in a certain town or county, by offering the government an advance—say, 𐆖10,000. (The 𐆖 stands for denarii; it’s like our dollar sign.) If they outbid everyone they got the contract—and had to pay the government the 𐆖10,000 advance. Now they had to make it back: Collect rent, charge tolls, demand a percentage of merchants’ profits. They shook everybody down to make back that 𐆖10,000.

And everything they made beyond that 𐆖10,000, they got to keep. So the more unscrupulous the publican, the higher taxes would be, and the richer they got.

Richer, and corrupt. They’d bribe government officials to get their contracts, bribe their way out of trouble if they were charged with over-taxing, and bribe their way out of trouble for any other crimes. When Augustus Caesar took over the senate in 30BC, he tried to eliminate tax farming, figuring it’d lower taxes and reduce bribery. He took it away from the publicans, who switched careers and got into banking and money-lending. He put government officials in charge… but lazy officials who didn’t want this job, simply hired other tax farmers to collect for them.

Since you no longer had to be of publicani rank to be a taxman, any wealthy person could bid for the job, and get it. And that’s what happened in first-century Israel: Rich Jews became tax farmers, and did the Romans’ dirty work for them. Their fellow Jews saw them as traitors—as greedy, exploitative sellouts. Which, to be fair, they totally were.