The Problem with Spotting Pharisees…

Leonard Sweet (author/futurist/theologian) recently tweeted that when Jesus walked the earth, 6000 Pharisees were employed to support and enforce Judaism’s proper expression. The first Biblical mention of the Pharisees was in the book of Ezra. The original Pharisees consisted of scribes and sages but eventually they took on functions more associated with lawyers. The Pharisees took it upon themselves to provide the authoritative interpretation of Moses Law.

I did a little digging was surprised by the Pharisees’ high standing in the culture. The Pharisees were generally loved for their stance against the pagan cultures that threatened Israel’s national identity. Half of the reason Israel was exiled was that they adopted the idolatry of their pagan neighbors (this was only half the reason). The masses loved the Pharisees because they controlled the definition of what it meant to be Jewish and what it means to be acceptable to God.

They were also more reasonable than their rival and more conversational party, the Sadducees. Sadducees interpreted that “eye for an eye” verse literally. The Pharisees had a more temperate interpretation. If you perpetrated a crime that caused your neighbor to lose an eye than you gave your neighbor something that had the value of said lost eye. The penalty was certainly pricey but didn’t involve gouging out body parts. The common folk loved that level of reasonableness in their religious lawyers.

I’m so accustomed to reading the Gospel and seeing the Pharisees cast as villains that I just assumed that these lawyers were universally unpopular. But that’s not the case. In those days parents aspired to have their sons grow up to be Pharisee and defenders of the faith. So we can imagine the surprise and anger the Pharisees had when the upstart rabbi, Jesus, showed up and threatened their popularity and power.

This is alarming to me. This means that modern day equivalents to the Pharisees within Christianity don’t lie in within the lunatic fringe of our faith. It’s easy to point to hatemongers like the Westboro Baptists or Terry Jones and say, “Aha! A Pharisee.” These targets are too easy. Pharisee-ism is harder to see because Pharisees work to maintain the status quo that you and I desire. Pharisees work for us.

In America, we’re not a theocracy despite the fears and rhetoric. We don’t have religious lawyers. But popular influence within Christianity seems to lie first within our mass media and publishing industries and then, to a lesser extent, our seminaries. My guess is that if we looked hard we might see Pharisee-ism look like this in American Evangelicalism:

Pharisees would be popular authors, TV or radio hosts whose message fixates on saving America from the surrounding culture. They might rail against secular humanism or even create unique classes of “sinners” whose behavior is particularly corrosive to the fabric of our society.

Politicians who wrap themselves in the Bible and the American flag simultaneously in an attempt corner the market on morality would be Pharisees. They would lump their opponents in a class of sinners and declare them dangerous to the survival of the country. 1st Century Pharisees consolidated their power by defining what it meant to be Jewish. Today’s Pharisees work equally hard to control the definition of patriotism.

Pharisees work for us. It follows that whatever talking head we listen to that makes us comfortable and shake our heads in agreement might in fact be a Pharisee. If we’re only challenged to be better versions of what we naturally already are, instead of being more like Christ, we might have surrendered our Christian freedom to a Pharisee.

Pharisee-ism can plague the Religious Left and the Religious Right. All you need is a heritage or a preferred future needing protecting. Pointing out Pharisee-ism outside of your tribe only shields you from seeing it within.

A Pharisee is more concerned with separating the church from culture instead of engaging and transforming it.
Pharisees are almost always people we admire.

It seems to me that this list describes parts of popular Christian media, doesn’t it? Pharisee-ism isn’t something “out there.” It’s closer than we think.

What else needs to be added to this list of what a modern day Pharisee might look like?

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This post originally appeared at www.larryshallenberger.com